rom her previous low position, and they ground
themselves upon the worship of Mary, the "mother of God,"--a cult,
however, that sprang up only later in Christendom, but which they point
to as a sign of regard for the whole sex. The Roman Catholic Church,
which celebrates this cult, should be the last to lay claim to such a
doctrine. The Saints and Fathers of the Church, cited above, and whose
utterances could be easily multiplied--and they are the leading Church
authorities--express themselves separately and collectively hostile to
woman and to marriage. The Council of Macon, which, in the sixteenth
century, discussed the question whether woman had a soul, and which
decided with a majority of but one vote, that she had, likewise argues
against the theory of such a friendly posture towards woman. The
introduction of celibacy by Gregory VII[32]--although resorted to first
of all and mainly with the end in view of holding in the unmarried
priesthood a power that could not be alienated from the service of the
Church through any family interests--was, nevertheless, possible only
with such fundamental doctrines as the Church held touching the
sinfulness of the lusts of the flesh; and it goes to confirm our theory.

Neither did the Reformers, especially Calvin and the Scotch ministers,
with their wrath at the "lusts of the flesh," entertain any doubt
touching the hostile posture of Christianity towards woman.[33]

By the introduction of the cult of Mary, the Roman Catholic Church
shrewdly placed the worship of Mary in the place of that of the heathen
goddesses, in vogue among _all_ the people over whom Christianity was
then extending itself. _Mary_ took the place of the Cybele, the Mylitta,
the Aphrodite, the Venus, the Ceres, etc., of the southern races; of the
Freia, the Frigga, etc., of the Germanian tribes. She was a mere
spiritually-Christian idealization.

The primeval, physically robust, though rude yet uncorrupted races,
that, during the first centuries of our reckoning, crowded down from the
North and East like a gigantic ocean wave, and swamped the worn-out
universal Empire of Rome, where Christianity had gradually been
superimposing itself as master, resisted with all their might the
ascetic doctrines of the Christian preachers. With good grace or bad,
the latter were forced to reckon with these robust natures. With
astonishment did the Romans perceive that the customs of those peoples
were quite different from th