Marriage is not far removed from fornication.—Tertullian.
She is more fitted for bodily work.... Remember that God took a rib out of Adam’s body, not a part of his soul, to make her.
She was not made to the image of God, like man.—St. Ambrose.
Woman is the root of all evil.—St. Jerome.
At the Council of Auxerre, in 578, the bishops forbade women, on account of their “impurity,” to take the sacrament in their hands as men did.
If women only knew of these sayings, would they approve of the “appeal to the first six centuries”?
Bad as the position of woman was under the influence of the early Church teaching, it was, in many respects, still worse during the Middle Ages. “Life-long seclusion in the inner apartments of the house of a man she has not chosen, or internment in a nunnery—that is, either degraded or unnatural—is the choice (within limits) of the daughter of the wealthy. Life-long drudgery, with few and coarse pleasures, with a long vista of sticks and whips, and scold’s bridles, and ducking stools—with, perhaps, the brutal ‘ordeal’ on the slightest suspicion, or the ghastly death of the witch, is the prospect of the daughter of the poor.”[13] Even the Reformation altered more than it improved the condition of woman. How could it be otherwise when the Reformers were nothing if not Bibliolaters?
Of the movement for the betterment of woman’s position that eventually took place, not by the aid, but in spite, of the Church, I have already spoken. All the evidence we possess regarding the history of Heathendom and Christendom conclusively shows that Christianity has done much to lower, and but little to elevate, the position of women. Should I have succeeded in arousing the interest of my gentle readers, or should they wish to verify my statements, I implore them to read well-known works of competent authorities on this subject. The astounding but apparently prevalent idea, that woman is only secured by Christianity from the brutal assaults of man, will appear in the next argument we are about to consider.