is not acknowledged at all, while yet there is a deceitful show of acknowledgment. Marriage is sanctioned not in order to hallow and satisfy the flesh, but to restrict the flesh, to repress it, to kill it--to drive Beelzebub out by Beelzebub. "Quae res et viris et feminis omnibus adest ad matrimonium et stuprum? Commixtio carnis scilicet, cujus concupiscentiam Dominus stupro adaequavit.... Ideo virginis principalis sanctitas, quia caret stupri affinitati."--Tertullianus (de Exhort. Cast. c. 9). "Et de ipso conjugis melius aliquid, quam concessisti, monuisti."--Augustinus (Confess. x. c. 30). "It is better to marry than to burn."--I Cor. vii. 9. But how much better is it, says Tertullian, developing this text, neither to marry nor to burn.... "Possum dicere, quod permittitur bonum non est."--(Ad Uxorem, l. i. c. 3.) "De minoribus bonis est conjugiam, quod non meretur palmam, sed est in remedium.... Prima institutio habuit praeceptum, secunda indulgentiam. Didicimus enim ab Apostolo, humano generi propter vitandam fornicationem indultum esse conjugium."--Petrus Lomb. (l. iv. dist. 26, c. 2). "The Master of the Sentences says rightly, that in Paradise marriage was ordained as service, but after sin as medicine."--Luther (Th. i. p. 349). "Where marriage and virginity are compared, certainly chastity is a nobler gift than marriage."--Id. (Th. i. p. 319). "Those whom the weakness of nature does not compel to marriage, but who are such that they can dispense with marriage, these do rightly to abstain from marriage."--Id. (Th. v. p. 538). Christian sophistry will reply to this, that only marriage which is not Christian, only that which is not consecrated by the spirit of Christianity, i.e., in which Nature is not veiled in pious images, is unholy. But if marriage, if Nature is first made holy by relation to Christ, it is not the holiness of marriage which is declared, but of Christianity; and marriage, Nature, in and by itself, is unholy. And what is the semblance of holiness with which Christianity invests marriage, in order to becloud the understanding, but a pious illusion? Can the Christian fulfil his marriage duties without surrendering himself, willingly or not, to the passion of love? Yes indeed. The Christian has for his object the replenishing of the Christian Church, not the satisfaction of love. The end is holy, but the means in itself unholy. And the end sanctifies, exculpates the means. "Conjugalis concubitus generandi gratia non habet culpam." Thus the Christian, at least the true Christian, denies, or at least is bound to deny Nature, while he satisfies it; he does not wish for, he rather contemns the means in itself; he seeks only the end in abstracto; he does with religious, supranaturalistic horror what he does, though against his will, with natural, sensual pleasure. The Christian does not candidly confess his sensuality, he denies Nature before his faith, and his faith before Nature, i.e., he publicly disavows what he privately does.