"This proves that you
[Manicheans] approve of having a wife, not for the procreation of children, but
for the gratification of passion. In marriage, as the marriage law declares,
the man and woman come together for the procreation of children. Therefore,
whoever makes the procreation of children a greater sin than copulation,
forbids marriage and makes the woman not a wife but a mistress, who for some
gifts presented to her is joined to the man to gratify his passion" (The
Morals of the Manichees 18:65 [A.D. 388]).
"You [Manicheans] make your
auditors adulterers of their wives when they take care lest the women with whom
they copulate conceive. They take wives according to the laws of matrimony by
tablets announcing that the marriage is contracted to procreate children; and
then, fearing because of your law [against childbearing] . . . they copulate in
a shameful union only to satisfy lust for their wives. They are unwilling to
have children, on whose account alone marriages are made. How is it, then, that
you are not those prohibiting marriage, as the apostle predicted of you so long
ago [1 Tim. 4:1-4], when you try to take from marriage what marriage is? When
this is taken away, husbands are shameful lovers, wives are harlots, bridal
chambers are brothels, fathers-in-law are pimps" (Against Faustus 15:7
[A.D. 400]).
"For thus the eternal law,
that is, the will of God creator of all creatures, taking counsel for the
conservation of natural order, not to serve lust, but to see to the
preservation of the race, permits the delight of mortal flesh to be released
from the control of reason in copulation only to propagate progeny"
(ibid., 22:30).
"For necessary sexual
intercourse for begetting [children] is alone worthy of marriage. But that
which goes beyond this necessity no longer follows reason but lust. And yet it
pertains to the character of marriage . . . to yield it to the partner lest by
fornication the other sin damnably [through adultery]. . . . [T]hey [must] not
turn away from them the mercy of God . . . by changing the natural use into
that which is against nature, which is more damnable when it is done in the
case of husband or wife. For, whereas that natural use, when it pass beyond the
compact of marriage, that is, beyond the necessity of begetting [children], is
pardonable in the case of a wife, damnable in the case of a harlot; that which
is against nature is execrable when done in the case of a harlot, but more
execrable in the case of a wife. Of so great power is the ordinance of the
Creator, and the order of creation, that . . . when the man shall wish to use a
body part of the wife not allowed for this purpose [orally or anally
consummated sex], the wife is more shameful, if she suffer it to take place in
her own case, than if in the case of another woman" (The Good of Marriage
11-12 [A.D. 401])...
"I am supposing, then,
although you are not lying [with your wife] for the sake of procreating
offspring, you are not for the sake of lust obstructing their procreation by an
evil prayer or an evil deed. Those who do this, although they are called
husband and wife, are not; nor do they retain any reality of marriage, but with
a respectable name cover a shame. Sometimes this lustful cruelty, or cruel
lust, comes to this, that they even procure poisons of sterility. . . .
Assuredly if both husband and wife are like this, they are not married, and if
they were like this from the beginning they come together not joined in
matrimony but in seduction. If both are not like this, I dare to say that
either the wife is in a fashion the harlot of her husband or he is an adulterer
with his own wife" (Marriage and Concupiscence 1:15:17 [A.D. 419]).
Quick Links on the Early Church: Church Fathers, Life of St. Augustine, St. Irenaeus (Bishop of Lyons), Clement of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, St. Ignatius of Antioch, Pelagianism, The Confessions by St. Augustine, The City of God by St. Augustine, the Martyrdom of Polycarp, Epistle to St. Polycarp, St. Basil the Great, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Cyprian of Carthage, St. Jerome, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Barnabas, St. John Chrysostom, St. Ambrose, Eusebius, The Faith of the Early Church Fathers book, Did the Church Fathers Believe in Sola Scriptura? Foundations of Protestantism, Still Catholic