development. The Catholic Church, therefore, while regarding with
admiration a continence in marriage which excluded sexual
relations except for the end of procreation, has followed St.
Augustine in treating intercourse apart from procreation with
considerable indulgence, as only a venial sin. Here, however, the
Church was inclined to draw the line, and it appears that in 1679
Innocent XI condemned the proposition that "the conjugal act,
practiced for pleasure alone, is exempt even from venial sin."

Protestant theologians have been inclined to go further, and
therein they found some authority even in Catholic writers. John
a Lasco, the Catholic Bishop who became a Protestant and settled
in England during Edward VI's reign, was following many mediaeval
theologians when he recognized the _sacramentum solationis_, in
addition to _proles_, as an element of marriage. Cranmer, in his
marriage service of 1549, stated that "mutual help and comfort,"
as well as procreation, enter into the object of marriage
(Wickham Legg, _Ecclesiological Essays_, p. 204; Howard,
_Matrimonial Institutions_, vol. i, p. 398). Modern theologians
speak still more distinctly. "The sexual act," says Northcote
(_Christianity and Sex Problems_, p. 55), "is a love act. Duly
regulated, it conduces to the ethical welfare of the individual
and promotes his efficiency as a social unit. The act itself and
its surrounding emotions stimulate within the organism the
powerful movements of a vast psychic life." At an earlier period
also, Schleiermacher, in his _Letters on Lucinde_, had pointed
out the great significance of love for the spiritual development
of the individual.

Edward Carpenter truly remarks, in _Love's Coming of Age_, that
sexual love is not only needed for physical creation, but also
for spiritual creation. Bloch, again, in discussing this question
(_The Sexual Life of Our Time_, Ch. VI) concludes that "love and
the sexual embrace have not only an end in procreation, they
constitute an end in themselves, and are necessary for the life,
development, and inner growth of the individual himself."

It is argued by some, who admit mutual love as a constituent part of
marriage, that such love, once recognized at the outset, may be taken for
granted, and requires no further discussion; there is, they believe, no
art of