Women Under Early Christian Law.
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WOMEN UNDER EARLY CHRISTIAN LAW. By R. Vashon Rogers. "V^E wives, be in subjection to your own speaking to God continually in songs and 1 husbands," ordered Peter. " Let the hymns." women learn in silence with all subjection," Nor had the deaconess any spiritual func tion : nor could she teach. Tertullian disap commanded Paul. Is the opinion so long and so widely held proved of women baptising : but the Canon that woman owes her present high position Law allowed it when no one else was available to Christianity a correct one? Or should it to perform the ordinance. be relegated to the region of myths like the No doubt Paul settles the question as to stories of William Tell, the Wandering Jew, women teaching : his opinion of the sex is a the Bluebeardness of Henry the Eighth, the stern one and the rules he lays down are virtues of Elizabeth? Principal Donaldson, very restrictive.. The Ebionites explain his of Aberdeen, declares that he used to hold attitude towards women : he was, they say, that opinion, but that he had been unable to not a Jew but a Greek, who went up to Jeru see that in the first three centuries of this era salem and there fell in love with the daughter Christianity had any favorable effect on the of the High Priest; to gain her hand he position of women, and that on the contrary became a proselyte; he proposed; was re he found that it tended to lower their charac fused; and, enraged, sought to destroy the ter and contract the range of their activity. faith which she held dear, and wrote against Until the State professed the new faith the circumcision, the Sabbath and the Law. laws and rules of conduct that governed and Paul's sayings we all know. Some of the controlled the Christians were promulgated Christian writers surpassed him in the strength by the Apostles and the early bishops and of their remarks. fathers of the Church, and their decisions and Tertullian (150-230) says to them : " Do their dicta were (we doubt not) as much you know that each one of you is an Eve? revered and obeyed by their followers as were The sentence of God on this sex of yours the rulings of the Rabbis by the adherents lives in this age : the guilt must of necessity of the elder Church, or in later times the live too. You are the devils' gateway; you decrees of Mr. Joseph Smith or Brigham are the unsealer of that forbidden tree; you are the first deserter of the divine law; you Young by the Latter Day Saints. At the first stage, without doubt, women are she who persuaded him whom the devil took a prominent part in the Christian Church, was not valiant enough to attack. You de but in a short time they only appeared in stroyed so easily God's image, man. On three capacities, deaconesses, widows and account of your desert, that is death, even the martyrs. The widows looked after the sick, son of God had to die." the needy, the destitute : they had no spirit Gentle Clement of Alexandria (150-230) ual duties to perform : they were not permit says : " Nothing disgraceful is proper for ted to teach, any more than they were man, who is endowed with reason; much less among the Jews, or the Hindoos, or among for woman, to whom it brings shame even to the Mahometans. A widow was "to sit at reflect of what nature she is." home, sing, pray, read, watch, and fast; Gregory Thaumaturgus (2 10-270) asserts :
