The introduction of Christianity effected no violent revolutions of any kind in the social relations of men and women, except by purifying these relations, and enforcing the duties dependent upon them. Christianity did not dictate any particular form of government, or any code of laws, but enjoined obedience to the existing laws, when they were not inconsistent with the laws of the gospel. The first Christians, while they were themselves scarcely tolerated, were not inclined to attempt a social revolution by opposing the established system of monogamy; but they attempted to oppose only its vices, and to remove them. They insisted, from the first, upon purity and chastity in men and women equally. They denounced prostitution, adultery, and frequent and capricious divorces, and did what they could to eradicate their practice. But before they attained any degree of civil or religious freedom, or were in any situation to introduce the purer system of polygamy, they had themselves become thoroughly Romanized; and the errors of Gnosticism, Platonism, and Montanism had then prevailed so extensively as to impel them, at last, to attempt a social reformation in a direction quite contrary to polygamy, by discouraging marriage, and by introducing asceticism, monasticism, and celibacy.