Tertulian (140-230), The Apparel of Women (197 C.E.)


If there existed upon earth a faith in proportion to the reward that faith will receive in heaven, no one of you, my beloved sisters, from the time when you came to know the living God and recognized your own state, that is, the condition of being a woman, would have desired a too attractive garb, and much less anything that seemed too ostentatious.  I think, rather, that you would have dressed in mourning garments and even neglected your exterior, acting the part of mourning and repentant Eve in order to expiate more fully by all sorts of penitential garb that which woman derives from Eve - the ignominy, I mean, of original sin and the odium of being the cause of the fall of the human race.  "In sorrow and anxiety, you will bring forth, O woman, and you are subject to your husband, and he is your master."  Do you not believe that you are (each) an Eve?

The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives on even in our times and so it is necessary that the guilt should live on, also.  You are the one who opened the door to the Devil, you are the one who first plucked the fruit of the forbidden tree, you are the first who deserted the divine law; you are the one who persuaded him whom the Devil was not strong enough to attack.  All too easily you destroyed the image of God, man.  Because of your desert, that is, death, even the Son of God had to die.  And you still think of putting adornments over the skins of animals that cover you?

[http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/augustine.html]