Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/810

776 still living, Luther called a synod of six of the principal reformers, who in joint consultation decided that as the Bible nowhere condemned polygamy, and as it had been invariably practiced by the highest dignitaries of the Church, the required permission should be granted. History does not tell us that the wife was consulted in the matter. She was held as in general subordination to the powers that be, as well as in special subordination to her husband; but more degrading than all else is the fact that the doctrine of unchastity for man was brought into the Reformation, as not inconsistent with the principles of the Gospel.

Many Protestant divines have written in favor of polygamy. John Lyser, a Lutheran minister, living in the latter part of the seventeenth century, defended it strongly in a work entitled "Polygamia Triumphatrix." A former general of the Capuchin Order, converted to the Protestant faith, published, in the sixteenth century, a book of "Dialogues in Favor of Polygamy." Rev. Mr. Madan, a Protestant divine, in a treatise called "Thalypthora," maintained that Paul's injunctions that bishops should be the husbands of one wife, signified that laymen were permitted to marry more than one. The scholarly William Ellery Channing could find no prohibition of polygamy in the New Testament. In his "Remarks on the Character and Writings of John Milton," he says: "We believe it to be an indisputable fact, that although Christianity was first preached in Asia, which had been from the earliest days the seat of polygamy, the apostles never denounced it as a crime, and never required their converts to put away all wives but one. No express prohibition of polygamy is found in the New Testament." The legitimate result of such views is seen in Mormonism, the latest Protestant sect, which claims its authority from the Bible as well as from the Book of Mormon. We give the remarks recently made in defence of polygamy by Bishop Lunt of the Mormon Church, to a reporter of The San Francisco Chronicle:

God revealed to Joseph Smith the polygamous system. It is quite true that his widow declared that no such revelation was ever made, but that was because she had lost the spirit. God commanded the human race to multiply and replenish the earth. Abraham had two wives, and the Almighty honored the second one by a direct communication, Jacob had Leah and Zilpah. David had a plurality of wives, and was a man after