Those whom condition has made your handmaids, and profession your sisters, you should no longer chafe at on account of the bond of servitude, but honour for the equality of profession. She therefore who serves alongside you in Christ in the service of virginity, rejoices in equal liberty with you. Nor do we so urge you to humility that we lift them up into pride: for while you receive them as sisters, let them the more graciously be your servants, and render obedience not bound by servitude but free in charity. For there is no respect of persons with the Lord (Ephesians 6), that is, in the dispensing of the faith, where alike provision is made for mistress and handmaid, where the mistress is not chosen and the handmaid rejected, but, equally baptized, they take together the body and blood of Christ.
For even the patriarchs, though they were most holy, as regards earthly and temporal things distinguished between servants and sons: the former they judged to be slaves, the latter masters; but as regards the gift of future hope, they made equal provision for sons and home-born slaves, marking them with one and the same circumcision.