Someone posted this at another message board - it's part of a sermon on lovemaking within the marriage ... I thought I'd check with you all on the accuracy of the history mentioned in this particular section ...
Because of rampant sexual sin and Greek dualism (separating the physical from the spiritual) the early church set a course of dishonoring the body and sexual pleasure.
Tertullian (155 AD 220 AD) and Ambrose (340 AD 397 AD) were said to prefer extinction of the human race to continued sexual intercourse. Origen (185 AD 254 AD) was so convinced of the evils of sexual pleasure that he not only allegorized the Song of Songs but also took a knife and castrated himself. Gregory of Nyssa (335 AD 394 AD) taught that Adam and Eve were created without sexual desire and if the fall had not occurred the race would have reproduced itself by some harmless mode of vegetation. Chrysostom (347 AD 407 AD) said that Adam and Eve could not have had sexual relations prior to the fall. Jerome (347 AD 420 AD) often threw himself into thorny brambles to overwhelm himself with pain when he began to desire a woman sexually. Augustine (354 AD 430 AD) was sexually active prior to his conversion and later decided that sex within marriage was not sinful, though the lust and passion associated with it was sinful. The view of the Catholic Church through the Middle Ages was that sexual love, both in and out of marriage, was evil. By the fifth century priests were forbidden to marry. The church eventually began to limit the days on which sex was permissible and continued adding days until half of the year or more was prohibited. Thomas Aquinas (1225 AD -1274 AD) taught that sex was only permissible for purposes of procreation.Martin Luther (1438 AD 1546 AD) said that, Intercourse is never without sin; but God excuses it by his grace because the estate of marriage is his work, and he preserves in and through the sin all that good which he has implanted and blessed in marriage.