The author of the Apocalypse, a writer of the first century, who was received in the second as John the apostle, holds up a yet more degrading view of the matrimonial relation. In one of his visions he exhibits 144,000 chosen saints, perpetual attendants of "the Lamb," and places the cardinal point of their sanctity in the fact, that "they were not defiled with women, but were virgins." Marriage, therefore, is defilement! Protestant writers struggle in vain against this obvious meaning of the passage. Against all analogy of Scriptural metaphor, they gratuitously pretend that _women_ mean _idolatrous religions_: namely, because in the Old Testament the Jewish Church is personified as a virgin betrothed to God, and an idol is spoken of as her paramour. As a result of the apostolic doctrines, in the second, third, and following centuries, very gross views concerning the relation of the sexes prevailed, and have been everywhere transmitted where men's morality is exclusively[14] formed from the New Testament. The marriage service of the Church of England, which incorporates the Pauline doctrine is felt by English brides and bridegrooms to contain what is so offensive and degrading, that many clergymen mercifully make unlawful omissions. Paul had indeed expressly denounced _prohibitions_ of marriage. In merely _dissuading_ it, he gave advice, which, from his limited horizon and under his expectation of the speedy return of Christ, was sensible and good; but when this advice, with all its reasons, was made on oracle of eternal wisdom, it generated the monkish notions concerning womanhood. If the desire of a wife is a weakness, which the apostle would gladly have forbidden, only that he feared worse consequences, an enthusiastic youth cannot but infer that it is a higher state of perfection _not_ to desire a wife, and therefore aspires to "the crown of virginity." Here at once is full-grown monkery. Hence that debasement of the imagination, which is directed perpetually to the lowest, instead of the highest side of the female nature. Hence the disgusting admiration and invocation of Mary's perpetual virginity. Hence the transcendental doctrine of her immaculate conception from Anne, the "grandmother of God." In the above my critics have represented me to say that Christianity has done _nothing_ for women. I have not said so, but that what it has done has been exaggerated. I say: If the _theory_ of Christianity is to take credit from the _history_ of Christendom, it must also receive discredit. Taking in the whole system of nuns and celibates, and the doctrine which sustains it, the root of which is apostolic, I doubt whether any balance of credit remains over from this side of Christian history. I am well aware that the democratic doctrine of "the equality of souls" has a _tendency_ to elevate women,--and the poorer orders too; but this is not the whole of actual Christianity, which is a very heterogeneous mass.