The Rev. Dr. Wilbur Fisk, president of Wesleyan University, says: “The New Testament enjoins obedience upon the slave as an obligation due to a present rightful authority.”
561
Did he favor marriage?
Matthew: He advocated celibacy, and even self-mutilation as preferable to marriage ([xix, 10–12]).
Following this teaching of their Master, Christians, many of them, have condemned marriage. A Christian pope, Siricius, branded it as “a pollution of the flesh.” St. Jerome taught that the duty of the saint was to “cut down by the axe of Virginity the wood of Marriage.” Pascal says: “Marriage is the lowest and most dangerous condition of the Christian.”
G. W. Foote of England says: “Jesus appears to have despised the union of the sexes, therefore marriage, and therefore the home. He taught that in heaven, where all is perfect, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage.”
“Monks and nuns innumerable owe to this evil teaching their shriveled lives and withered hearts.”—Mrs. Besant.