This antagonism to marriage had a great influence on family life. It is strange how seldom children are mentioned in the Christian writings of the second and third centuries. Almost nothing is said of their training; no efforts are mentioned as being made for their instruction. The Christians had come to the belief that the world had enough of children, and was fully stocked, and that every birth was a cause of sorrow and not of joy. One writer[147] interprets the wail of the infant as he enters the world thus: “Why, O mother, didst thou bring me forth to this life, in which prolongation of life is progress to death? Why hast thou brought me into this troubled world, in which, on being born, swaddling bands are my first experience? Why hast thou delivered me to such a life as this, in which a pitiable youth wastes away before old age, and old age is shunned as under the doom of death? Dreadful, O mother, is the course of life which has death as the goal of the runner. Bitter is the road of life we travel, with the grave as the wayfarer’s inn.” Tertullian[148] says: “Further reasons for marriage which men allege for themselves arise from anxiety for posterity, and the bitter, bitter pleasure of children. To us this is idle. For why should we be eager to bear children, whom, when we have them, we desire to send before us to glory (in respect, I mean, of the distresses that are now imminent); desirous as we are ourselves to be taken out of this most wicked world and received into the Lord’s presence.” He describes children as “burdens which are to us most of all unsuitable, as being perilous to faith.” And again: “Let the well-known burdensomeness of children, especially in our case, suffice to counsel widowhood--children whom men are compelled by laws to have, because no wise man would ever willingly have desired sons.” And he exclaims,[149] “A Christian forsooth will seek heirs, disinherited as he is from the entire world.”