"Neither marry at first, for no other object than to rear children, or else abstaining from marriage, continue to live in a state of continence."
Apology I, 37.
He notes with approval a Christian youth who begged P^elix, the governor of Alexandria, for permission to be made a eunuch by a physician, in order to attest his continence to the world. (Felix, however, had the good sense to refuse.) To such an extent was this unnatural loathing for wedlock carried, that Constantine found it judicious to remove the old-time penalties against celibacy, because of the many Christians who continued celibates from motives of religion.
Since marriage on natural grounds was thus depreciated by the early Church as impure when occurring between earthly men and women, we need not wonder that she viewed with horror the very thought of wedlock with an angel in as much as angels were supposed to be above earthly weaknesses. Having thus starteed from a false premise, i. e., that marital passion cannot be pure in God's sight, there was no other deduction to be made regarding these love-matches between angels and women but that they were sinful.
4. But, according to the Christian Fathers, the angels committed other sins, in addition to seeking a woman in honorable marriage. They actually endeavored to beautify the world into which they had come, and to make men wiser and happier by teaching them various arts and sciences. One might have thought this a cause for gratitude; but the Church Fathers, having started from a false premise, were logically bound to deduce the theory which Tertullian did that as these spirit husbands were fallen angels, what they taught could not possibly be conducive either to integrity, chastity, or the fear of God. Therefore, dress and adornment and the industrial arts of dyeing and metallurgy were sinful, and consequently, displeasing to the Almighty. Very different is the view taken by a more modern writer, Sir Thomas Browne, the author of the Religio Medici who, advocating the doctrine of this celestial guardianship over marriage on earth, observes: "I do think that many mysteries ascribed to our own inventions, have been the courteous
