CHRISTIAN MARRIAGE AND MORALITY 41 



marriage was regarded as a purely civil contract. It 

 was bitterly assailed in that form by the fathers of 

 the Church, and there was a particularly nauseous 

 element in the reforming zeal of these holy men. 

 Chastity was preached not because it was a good thing 

 in itself, but because man's fall and the necessity for 

 his redemption were traced to an indiscretion com- 

 mitted in the Garden of Eden. The polluting influ- 

 ence of passion was not thought to be redeemed by 

 marriage. All intercourse between the sexes was 

 discountenanced. It was taught that to have child- 

 ren under any circumstances was a sin, as it only 

 supplied food for death, and that woman was an in- 

 strument of Satan. Continence was declared to be 

 the perfection of virtue. In pursuance of this doc- 

 trine, Origen, one of the fathers of the third century, 

 did violence to his own person, and emasculation 

 thereafter was not infrequently practised. Young 

 people were enjoined to enter into vows of celibacy, 

 and multitudes of them did so, nunneries and mon- 

 asteries being established to receive them. Second 



or interest of the reigning pontiff ; besides a thousand nice and 

 difficult scruples with which the clergy puzzled the understandings 

 and loaded the consciences of the inferior orders of the laity, and 

 which could only be unravelled by these their spiritual guides." — 

 Blackstone's Commentaries. 



