prove we this? Already have we proved it by the words of Mary, “Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing.” 18. Now in the first place for the instruction of the women, our sisters, such saintly modesty of the Virgin Mary must not be passed over, brethren. She had given birth to Christ—the Angel had come to her, and said, “Behold, thou shall conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a Son, and shalt call His name Jesus.1735 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest.”1736 She1737 had been thought worthy to give birth to the Son of the Highest, yet was she most humble; nor did she put herself before her husband, even in the order of naming him, so as to say, “I and Thy father,” but she saith, “Thy father and I.” She regarded not the high honour1738 of her womb, but the order of wedlock did she regard, for Christ the humble would not have taught His mother to be proud. “Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing.” Thy father and I, she saith, “for the husband is the head of the woman.”1739 How much less then ought other women to be proud! for Mary herself also is called a woman, not from the loss of virginity, but by a form of expression peculiar to her country; for of the Lord Jesus the Apostle also said, “made of a woman,”1740 yet there is no interruption hence to the order and connection of our Creed1741 wherein we confess 252 “that He was born of the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary.” For as a virgin she conceived Him, as a virgin brought Him forth, and a virgin she continued; but all females they called “women,”1742 by a peculiarity of the Hebrew tongue. Hear a most plain example of this. The first woman whom God made, having taken her out of the side of a man, was called a woman before she “knew” her husband, which we are told was not till after they went out of Paradise, for the Scripture saith, “He made her a woman.”1743 19. The answer then of the Lord Jesus Christ, “I must be about My Father’s service,” does not in such sense declare God to be His Father, as to deny that Joseph was His father also; And whence prove we this? By the Scripture, which saith on this wise, “And He said unto them, Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s service; but they understood not what He spake to them: and when He went down with them, He came to Nazareth, and was 1735 Luke i. 31. 1736 Luke i. 32. 1737 Meruerat. 1738 Dignitatem. 1739 Ephes. v. 23. 1740 Gal. iv. 4. 1741 Fidei. 1742 אשה femina mulier omnis ætatis et conditionis, sive nupta est, sive non est. Gesenius, Lex. Heb., vide exempla, especially Gen. xxiv. 5 and Isa. iv. 1. Vid. Serm. lii. 10. 1743 Gen. ii. 22. 540 Of the agreement of the evangelists Matthew and Luke in the generations…