Miscellanies 3.6.53

For Peter and Philip had children, and Philip also gave his daughters to husbands; and Paul does not hesitate in one letter to address his own yokefellow, whom he did not take about with him for the sake of the convenience of his ministry. He says, then, in one letter: “Do we not have the right to take about a sister as wife, as the other apostles also do?” But these, devoting themselves, as befitted their ministry, to preaching without distraction, took their wives about not as wives but as sisters, to be fellow ministers to the women who kept at home, through whom the Lord's teaching entered even the women's quarters without scandal. For we know also what the noble Paul lays down about women deacons in the other letter to Timothy. And this same man cried out that “the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking,” nor indeed abstaining from wine and meat, “but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Which of them goes about with a sheepskin and a leather belt, like Elijah? Who is clothed in sackcloth, naked otherwise and barefoot, like Isaiah? Or only in a linen loincloth, like Jeremiah? And who will imitate John's knowing way of life? Yet the blessed prophets, living so, gave thanks to the Creator.