followers has done everything that has been done to mitigate the truly awful bondage of women.
Chastity it did secure; but at the expense of wifehood and motherhood. Virginity it exalted, teaching that "marriage replenishes the earth but virginity replenishes heaven." St. Paul's teachings were of such a character that marriage became identified with lust and passion and sinfulness.
St. Chrysostom represented the attitude towards women of the early Christian Fathers when he wrote of them as “a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic peril, a deadly fascination, and a painted ill.”
The Protestant Reformation did some little to improve the lot of women; but its founder occupied a position towards the sex little, if any, better than the attitude of the Christian Fathers. Witch-burning waxed fast and furious under the blessing of Martin Luther, and sexual indulgence, within the marriage bonds, was condoned by him. That men might be saved from the consequences of their lustfulness, Luther advised very early marriages; but the sufferings of the wives
