* * * * *

RIB, WHY THE FIRST WOMAN FORMED FROM.

Allow me to request a place for the following curious and quaint
exposition of the propriety of the selection of _the rib_ as the
material out of which our first mother Eve was formed; and the ingenious
illustration which it is made to afford of the relation between wife and
husband. {214}

"Thirdly, God so ordered the matter betwixt them, that this
adhæsion and agglutination of one to the other should be
perpetuall. For by taking a bone from the man (who was _nimium
osseus_, exceeded and was somewhat monstrous, by one bone too
much) to strengthen the woman, and by putting flesh in steede
thereof to mollifie the man, he made a sweete complexion and
temper betwixt them, like harmony in musicke, for their amiable
cohabitation.

"Fourthly, that bone which God tooke from the man, was from out
the midst of him. As Christ wrought saluation _in medio terræ_,
so God made the woman _è medio viri_, out of the very midst of
man. The _species_ of the bone is exprest to be _costa_, a rib,
a bone of the side, not of the head: a woman is not _domina_,
the ruler; nor of any anterior part; she is not _prælata_,
preferred before the man; nor a bone of the foote; she is not
_serva_, a handmaid; nor of any hinder part; she is not
_post-posita_, set behind the man: but a bone of the _side_, of
a middle and indifferent part, to show that she is _socia_, a