Page:Heavenly Bridegrooms.djvu/35

 Church Fathers, one and all, treated marriage as a mere expedient. Tertullian said that the reason why 'marrying' is good, is that 'burning' is worse. Minncius Felix (Octavius XXXI) remarks that "with some even the modest intercourse of the sexes causes a blush." Methodius has an entire book devoted to an argument offered by ten virgins against wedlock rnd in behalf of perpetual virginity. Origen says:

"God has allowed us to marry, because all are not fit for the higher, that is, the perfectly pure life. Cyprian says that, "Chastity maintains the first rank in virgins, the second in those who are continent, the third in the case of wedlock." He also says:

"What else is virginity than the glorious preparation for the future life? Virginity is of neither sex. Virginity is the continuance of infancy. Virginity is the triumph over pleasures. Virginity has not children; but what is more, it has contempt for offspring; it has not fruitfulness, but neither has it bereavement; blessed that it is free from the pain of bringing forth, more blessed still that it is free from the calamity of the death of children. What else is virginity than the freedom of liberty? It has no husband or master. Virginity is freed from all affections; it has not given up to marriage, nor to the world, nor to children."

Cyprian, Of the Discipline of Chastity, 7.

Justin Martyr exults that "many, both men and women of the age of sixty and seventy years, who have been disciples of Christ from their youth, continue in immaculate virginity."

In a spurious fragment credited to "Hippolytus, the Syrian Expositor of the Forum," the writer refers to an ancient Hebrew MS., which tells of Noah being commanded by God to stake off each male animal in the ark from the corresponding female. The other and principal object of marriage which runs through all nature from protoplasmic cells up to man of mutual exchange of strength and mutual happiness, seems to have been totally ignored by the early Christian Fathers. Lactantius held that it is impossible the two sexes could have been instructed except for the sake of generation. Justin Martyr says frankly: