The low estimate of women that prevailed even in the early Church
is admitted by Christian scholars. "We cannot but notice," writes
Meyrick (art. "Marriage," Smith and Cheetham, _Dictionary of
Christian Antiquities_), "even in the greatest of the Christian
fathers a lamentably low estimate of woman, and consequently of
the marriage relationship. Even St. Augustine can see no
justification for marriage, except in a grave desire deliberately
adopted of having children; and in accordance with this view, all
married intercourse, except for this single purpose, is harshly
condemned. If marriage is sought after for the sake of children,
it is justifiable; if entered into as a _remedium_ to avoid worse
evils, it is pardonable; the idea of the mutual society, help,
and comfort that the one ought to have of the other, both in
prosperity and adversity, hardly existed, and could hardly yet
exist."

From the woman's point of view, Lily Braun, in her important work
on the woman question (_Die Frauenfrage_, 1901, pp. 28 et seq.)
concludes that, in so far as Christianity was favorable to women,
we must see that favorable influence in the placing of women on
the same moral level as men, as illustrated in the saying of
Jesus, "Let him who is without sin amongst you cast the first
stone," implying that each sex owes the same fidelity. It
reached, she adds, no further than this. "Christianity, which
women accepted as a deliverance with so much enthusiasm, and died
for as martyrs, has not fulfilled their hopes."

Even as regards the moral equality of the sexes in marriage, the
position of Christian authorities was sometimes equivocal. One of
the greatest of the Fathers, St. Basil, in the latter half of the
fourth century, distinguished between adultery and fornication as
committed by a married man; if with a married woman, it was
adultery; if with an unmarried woman, it was merely fornication.
In the former case, a wife should not receive her husband back;
in the latter case, she should (art. "Adultery," Smith and
Cheetham, _Dictionary of Christian Antiquities_). Such a
decision, by attaching supreme importance to a distinction which
could make no difference to the wife, involved a failure to
recognize her moral personality. Many of the Fathers in the
Western Church, however, like Jerome, Aug