THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
33). The subordination of woman appears only as a special act of subordination under God and Christ and under the general duty of love (Col. iii. 18; Eph. v. 22-24).
The ancient church spread these views and customs into larger circles. Marriage received a greater sanctity in so far as it was transformed from a private and civil act into a religious and public ceremony. It took place under the sanction of the Church with the accompaniments of bestowal of eucharistic oblations, congregational intercession, and priestly blessing. After the time 4. Marriage of Augustine it was regarded as a sacrain the ment, i.e., a sign of invisible gifts, Primitive namely, union of Christ with the con- Church, gregation, which furnishes a further reason for its indissolubility, even in cases of unfaithfulness and lack of children. The communion of faith, of religious exercises, of works of charity on a footing of equality — and the marriage tie was to be consummated only between Christians — brought about a closer union between husband and wife (Tertullian, Ad uxorem, ii. 9). Notwithstanding, a proper appreciation of the ethical significance of marriage for the Christian failed to develop. While the systematic condemnation of marriage by the Gnostics as contamination was refuted on the basis of faith in God as the creator, there reigned a sentiment that the communion of the sexes actually contaminated because it involved sensual appetite. Augustine saw in this appetite a consequence of sin. Thus abstinence appeared to take higher rank. Conjugal intercourse, according to him, was not sin if its purpose was the generation of children; it was deadly sin if its purpose was concupiscence. A second marriage was regarded as a sign of excess of sensuality. The reason for regarding matrimony as simply a protection against unchastity is to be found both in the ascetic ideal and in the fact that the expectation of the imminent end of the world hampered the appreciation of a positive ethical ideal. Tertullian considered it absurd for a Christian to desire children; for why should a man desire heirs or rejoice in possession of them if he must wish their speedy removal from this dangerous world? According to Augustine the truly pious desires only spiritual children. Whoever enters the state of matrimony must, of course, look for children who are to be born again (generare regenerandos) and upon educating them accordingly. With a general abstinence humanity would die out, but the coming of the kingdom of God would be only hastened. In the course of time such arguments became merely a dialectic means for the defense of the ascetic ideal which praised abstinence as the anticipation of angelic life, as the spiritual and therefore superior counterpart of marriage, and as communion in love of God and of Christ, explicit expression of which matrimony also tries to discover.
This conception, which is intelligible from the condition of primitive Christianity, persisted after the Church had learned to endure the prospect of a long future upon earth and of the task of educating other peoples in the Christian religion, but it was used by Christianity in order to gain among the rep-
resentatives of a higher perfection fit instruments for the accomplishment of its world dominion. Thus the estimate of matrimony in 5. Medieval comparison with the sanctity of the Estimate of monastical and priestly states remained Marriage, low. The unchastity of many monastics and celibates and a low valuation of marriage induced in the laity a moral degeneracy which was intensified toward the end of the Middle Ages by the coarseness which literature took on, by habitual slander of woman, and by the humanistic renascence of pagan lasciviousness and contempt of matrimony.
In contrast with religious and secular contempt of marriage, Luther paid the institution due honor. He regards sexual appetite as a consequence of the fall of man which becomes defensible only through the order of God. Therefore for him 6. Luther's also matrimony is an infirmary, and Conception, also a state necessary to all to whom has not been granted the rare gift of abstinence. From this point of view he praises the glory of matrimony. While the estimate of celibacy rests upon the illusion that God is pleased by self-chosen achievements, the state of matrimony is an institution of God. Consequently a wife is a gift of God. Thus a good conscience is secured for him who uses matrimony and becomes a protection against temptations to infidelity. The hardships which marriage entails become precious through the assurance that God is pleased with them. Finally matrimony fosters a chaster spirit than celibacy. By thus paying due regard to matrimony as a divine order of nature, Luther opposed arbitrary ecclesiastical restrictions of natural impulse. From such motives are to be explained the blunders which he committed to alleviate the distress of those to whom matrimony through the fault of either husband or wife offered no protection against temptation. But he conceded to nature only its right, not its dominion, in matrimony. He demanded moderation of the sexual instinct, and this he looked for from a deepening of physical fidelity to love and harmony, and not from casuistic guidance in the confessional. The real glory of matrimony Luther found in the ethical purpose for which God created man and woman, and upon the ethical gifts the development of which is their " nature." Children are not only to be born but are to be brought up in the fear of God and for his service. Upon this fact Luther based his judgment that no state is better before God than that of matrimony, and it especially takes precedence of virginity. His reasoning proceeded from the belief that nothing pleases God more than the saving of souls, particularly as it is done by parents, who are the apostles and bishops of children. " Particularly in the state of matrimony children are educated in the fear of God and in honor and virtue; for the natural love of parents makes the task of education a pleasure, and in parental love, which is similar to the love of God, children find an image of the divine heart." Here finally dawned that knowledge which Christianity should have acquired previously along with the conception of its task in universal history — the knowledge that the natural purpose