In giving the fullest account ever of attitudes to contraception throughout the history of the Church, Professor Noonan has done us all a service and written an important and valuable book. His perception and industry are admirable; so, I would add, is the intellectual and physical stamina which has brought him across so vast a Sahara of human folly. He does not disguise his opinion that the tradition is open to change, but his account contains a wealth of texts and references that provide matter for the reader’s verdict without dictating it. I should like to pick out some of the themes in his story – some only, by no means all – and reflect on them.

Two extreme conclusions about sex were drawn in the early Church. One denied that it was a matter for legislation among the redeemed; the other obliged the redeemed to abstain from it under pain of sin. The outrageous consequences of the former opinion made it less dangerous than the latter, in favour of which there were texts enough in the New Testament which, taken out of context, could be cited. The curiously lame replies of the orthodox Alexandrian theologians to this encratism appealed less to Scripture than to the contemporary philosophy of Stoicism, which conceived legitimate sexual activity in purely procreative terms, and drew strict analogies with agriculture and stock-breeding. For Christians to use sex in such a way was, theologians contended, legitimate; its use inspired by passion was sinful; and any use of it where procreation was impossible (as in pregnancy) or prevented (by drugs) removed the one bulwark against the rigorist objections, and so was also wrong.