From the PREFACE.
This is the translation of a singular little book which appeared in 1595, having for title: "Disputatio perjucunda qua Anonymus probare nititur mulieres homines non esse." Some notes have been added, and some parts omitted which only bore upon the errors of Sociniaus or Anabaptists. The Author of this little work pretends to prove by passages of Scripture that women are not of the human race. A Minister of Brandenburg, named Gedicus, refuted this seriously without understanding the Author*s' aim, which was to make a violent satire against the Socinians; for what can one imagine more calculated to turn them into ridicule, or more mortifying, than to show them that the carping strictures with which they contested the consubstantiality of the Son of God, are capable of being turned to prove that the Scriptures nowhere call women human. Thus one is wrong in imagining that there is anything serious in this little work ; as was before said it is literally nothing but a satire against the abuse of the Interpretations made by the Heretics of the Holy Scriptures. We know that all Heresies are only false interpretations of the Bible. There is not one, even to M. Lapeirere's fantastical ideas of the Pre-adamites, which is not founded, if they may be believed, on the testimony of Holy Writ. Luther was quite right when he called the Bible the book of the Heretics. The Scriptures, said the celebrated Montesquieu, is a country where Christians of all sects make descents, as it were to pillage; it is a field of battle where the hostile nations which meet each other engage in warfare, attack or skirmish in all soils of ways. Most of the Interpreters do not seek in the Scriptures that which they ought to believe, but that which they believe themselves, they have not regarded it as a Book in which were contained the dogmas they ought to receive, but as a work which could give Authority to their own ideas. It is for that that they have corrupted the meanings, and tortured all the passages.
We trust our fair readers will show no severity against this theological jesting. If the theory seem rather cruel to them they are not less the most cherished part of the human race: we are nevertheless convinced of the real advantages which they have over men, for we cannot deny that besides beauty and the graces of the body, they possess a certain delicacy of wit which men cannot attain by themselves. The man even who has the most wit is but an uncut diamond if he has not been polished by the fair sex.
