In point of fact, Christian doctrine, as propounded by Paul, is not at all so honourable to woman as that which German soundness of heart has established.  With Paul[13] the sole reason for marriage is, that a man may gratify instinct without sin.  He teaches, that but for this object it would be better not to marry.  He wishes that all were in this respect as free as himself, and calls it a special gift of God.  He does not encourage a man to desire a mutual soul intimately to share griefs and joys; one in whom the confiding heart can repose, whose smile shall reward and soften toil, whose voice shall beguile sorrow.  He does not seem aware that the fascinations of woman refine and chasten society; that virtuous attachment has in it an element of respect, which abashes and purifies, and which shields the soul, even when marriage is deferred; nor yet, that the union of two persons who have no previous affection can seldom yield the highest fruits of matrimony, but often leads to the severest temptations.  How should he have known all this?  Courtship before marriage did not exist in the society open to him:  hence he treats the propriety of giving away a maiden, as one in which her conscience, her likes and dislikes, are not concerned:  1 Cor. vii. 37, 38.  If the law leaves the parent “power over his own will” and imposes no “necessity” to give her away, Paul decidedly advises to keep her unmarried.

The author of the Apocalypse, a writer of the first century, who was received in the second as John the apostle, holds up a yet more degrading view of the matrimonial relation.  In one of his visions he exhibits 144,000 chosen saints, perpetual attendants of “the Lamb,” and places the cardinal point of their sanctity in the fact, that “they were not defiled with women, but were virgins.”  Marriage, therefore, is defilement!  Protestant writers struggle in vain against this obvious meaning of the passage.  Against all analogy of Scriptural metaphor, they gratuitously pretend that women mean idolatrous religions:  namely, because in the Old Testament the Jewish Church is personified as a virgin betrothed to God, and an idol is spoken of as her paramour.

As a result of the apostolic doctrines, in the second, third, and following centuries, very gross views concerning the relation of the sexes prevailed, and have been everywhere transmitted where men’s morality is exclusively[14] formed from the New Testament.  The marriage service of the Church of England, which incorporates the Pauline doctrine is felt by English brides and bridegrooms to contain what is so offensive and degrading, that many clergymen mercifully make unlawful omissions.  Paul had indeed expressly denounced prohibitions of marriage.  In merely dissuading it, he gave advice, which, from his limited horizon and under his expectation of the speedy return of Christ, was sensible and good; but when this advice, with all its reasons, was made