According to this, then, emasculation is agreeable to God, and renunciation of love and marriage is a worthy deed. St. Paul, who may be called the founder of Christianity even more so than Jesus himself, St. Paul, who removed this creed from the narrow Jewish sectarianism and gave it its international character, writes to the Corynthians: Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: it is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife and let every woman have her own husband. “Matrimony is a degraded station; to marry is good, not to marry is better.” “Walk in the spirit and resist the temptations of the flesh.” “The flesh conspires against the spirit and the spirit conspires against the flesh.” They, whom Christ has won, have crucified their flesh with all its passions and desires.------ He was true to his own views and refrained from marriage. This hatred of flesh is ~the hatred of woman, but also the fear of woman~, who is represented as man’s seducer. In this spirit the apostles and fathers of the church preached; in this same spirit the church used its influence during the entire middle ages, by establishing monasteries and introducing celibacy of priests, and it is still using its influence in the same direction. According to Christianity woman is ~impure~. She is the seducer who brought sin into the world and wrought man’s destruction. Therefore the apostles and fathers of the church regarded marriage as a necessary evil, as prostitution is regarded at present. Tertullian exclaims: “Woman, you ought to go about clad in mourning and rags, your eyes filled with tears of remorse, to make us forget that you have been mankind’s destruction. Woman, you are the gate to hell!” And: “Celibacy must be chose, even though the human race should perish.” Hieronymus says: “Matrimony is always a vice, all that can be done is to excuse it and to sanctify it; therefore it was made a religious sacrament.” Origines declares: “Matrimony is impure and unholy; a means of sensual passion.” To escape the temptation he emasculated himself. Augustin teaches: “The married people will shine in heaven like radiant stars, while their parents (their procreators) will be like dark stars.” Eusebius and Hieronymus are agreed that the teaching of the Bible: “Be fruitful and multiply,” is no longer suited to the times, and does not concern Christians. Hundreds of similar sayings by the most influential teachers of the church might be quoted, to prove that they all taught in the same spirit. By their continuous teaching and preaching they have disseminated those unnatural views about everything pertaining to sex and the sex relation, which after all is a ~law of nature, and the fulfillment of which is one of the most important duties in the plan of life~. Modern society is still suffering from the effects of these doctrines, and is but slowly recovering from them.