John Bunyan: "On Behalf of Women"

 From The Pilgrim's Progress, Second Part: 

I will now speak on the behalf of women, to take away their reproach. For as death and the curse came into the world by a woman, so also did life and health: 'God sent forth his Son made of a woman'.

Yea, to show how much those [women] that came after [Eve] did abhor the act of their mother, [they], in the Old Testament, coveted children, if happily this or that woman might be the mother of the Saviour of the world. I will say again, that, when the Saviour was come, women rejoiced in him before either man or angel. 

I read not that ever any man did give unto Christ so much as one coin; but the women followed him, and ministered to him of their substance. 'Twas a woman that washed his feet with tears; and a woman that anointed his body to the burial. They were women that wept when he was going to the cross; and women that followed him from the cross; and that sat by his sepulchre when he was buried. They were women that were first with him at his resurrection morn; and women that brought tidings first to his disciples that he was risen from the dead.

Women, therefore, are highly favoured; and show by these things that they are sharers with us in the grace of life.