openly and declared to all That he would neither totally separate himself from the Company of his Wife nor yet separating himself only in appearance enjoy her Company by stealth like an Adulterer For this would be unlawful and that unjust But that he both intended and desired to have many and handsom Children Notwithstanding this Profession he was ordained by Theophilus Patriarch of Alexandria than whom none better knew the Canons of the Church and who hath left some learned Monuments of his Skill in that kind I proceed next to the Practice of the VVestern Church where St. Hierom writing against Jovinian acknowledgeth that Celibacy was not then generally entertained by the Clergy many of whom retained the use of Marriage If Samuel saith he whose Example you object being brought up in the Temple married a Wife what doth this prejudiceVirginity As if at this day also many Priests used not Marriage And afterwards Married Men are chosen into the Priesthood I do not deny it but then the reason is because there are not so mayn Virgins or continent Persons as are necessary to supply the Office of the Priesthood For all cannot contain Where it is evident these married Priests renounced not the enjoyment of their Marriage after Ordination For then they must have been supposed to be continent Persons A little before his time Hilary Deacon of Rome writ his Questions upon both Testaments wherein he hath these words Hence the Apostle sheweth that a married man if in all other things he keeps the Commandments both may and ought to be ordained Priest. This was written few years before Siricius his Decree and proves that the Imposition of Celibacy was then so little thought of in the Church that it was believed unlawful and repugnant to Apostolical Institution That this Priest abstained not after Ordination is manifest For then he would therein also have observed the Commands whether of God or of the Church VVhen St. Augustin writ against Faustus the Manichee in the beginning of the Fifth Age no Imposition of Celibacy was yet introduced or so much as taken notice of in the Church of Africa For Faustus thus defends the Manichees immoderate Veneration of Virginity and dis-esteem of Marriage In the first place I would gladly be answered in this whether in any case to cause persons to continue Virgins be the Doctrine of Devils or only if it be done by a prohibition of Marriage If the later it concern s us not For we also think it as foolish to forbid those who are willing so unlawful and impious to compel those who are unwilling VVe persuade but force none Here two things may be observed First that in the Controversie between the Catholicks and Manichees about Marriage it was granted on both sides that a prohibition of Marriage to any Persons was unlawful impious and a Doctrine of Devils And then that no such Prohibition was in use among the Catholicks which Faustus confesseth and pretendeth that his Party is no less innocent from any such unlawful Imposition Siricius in imposing Celibacy upon the Clergy pleads neither any Divine Institution nor precedent custom of the Church but only the indecency of Marriage in them Rather Innocent renewing the Imposition confesseth it was no part of Ecclesiastical Discipline before Siricius his Decree For commanding those who had disobeyed Siricius his Constitution to be deposed he subjoins But if it shall be proved that the form of Ecclesiastical Life which the Bishop Siricius sent into the Provinces came not to the knowledge of any their Ignorance shall be pardoned provided they abstain for the future If Celibacy had been now long since setled in the Church by Ecclesiastical Canons and become a matter of constant Discipline none could have pleaded none would have deserved Pardon for their Ignorance In Africa the repulse given to Pope Siricius and afterwards the constancy of those Bishops in defending their Liberty against the Usurpations of Innocent had so far discouraged the Popes of Rome that despairing of being able to introduce Celibacy into that Church they thought it sufficient if they could only hinder the Ordinations of Bigamists and those who had married VVidows which were frequent in Africa Therefore Leo in his Epistle to the African Bishops complaining of this Abuse saith The Apostolick Precept of the Monogamy of a Bishop was ever held so sacred that the same condition is to be observed concerning the Wife of a Bishop to be chosen lest she perhaps before she was married to him should have had a former Husband Of total Abstinence from their Wives he maketh not the least mention And indeed all the Cautions and necessary qualifications which the antient Church required to be found in the Wives of the Clergy would have been wholly unnecessary if upon the Ordination of their Husbands they must immediately have ceased to be Wives But which is further to be observed in this Passage of Leo the antient Editions of his Decretal Epistles and particularly those in Crabbe's Collection of the Councils Colon. 1538. and 1551. instead of eligendi read eligendâ and then the Sense will be that the same condition is to be observed in the choice of a Bishop's or Priest's Wife and consequently in the Church of Africk it was permitted and by Leo thought not unlawful for the Clergy to contract Marriage even after Ordination That they used Marriage after Ordination we are assured by the Fathers of the Quinisext Council And indeed the more sober and moderate Popes seem never to have intended their Constitutions about Celibacy should be urged upon the Clergy out of the Roman Patriarchat nor did they calculate them for the universal Church It was Innocent alone of all the antient Popes who equalled the Ambition of his later Successors and endeavour'd to make the Roman Patriarchat as extensive as the Roman Empire This Patriarchat tookin but a small part of the Western Church and even that was sometimes contracted into narrower Bounds by the Invasions of the Barbarians who by their Success of Arms alienating many Provinces from the Government of the Roman Prefect withdrew them at the same time from the Jurisdiction of the Roman Patriarch Hence it was that Sicily being in possession of the barbarous Nations when P. Leo made his Decree about the Celibacy of Subdeacons the Clergy of Sicily thought not themselves obliged by it nor took any notice of it At least it met with no Obedience in that Church till the Island was in the next Age recovered to the Roman Empire And then it obtained not in Vertue of Leo's Constitution but because enforced by a Decree of Pope Pelagius II. about the year 588. Till then the Subdeacons of Sicily neither obeyed the Constitution nor were obliged to do it as Pope Gregory confesseth in his Repeal of Pelagius his Decree Three years since saith he the Subdeacons of all the Churches of Sicily were commanded to abstain from their Wives in
his Office saith the Canon of Ancyra he shall be excommunicated saith that of Eliberis This Canon doth not only prove beyond all contradiction the cohabitation of the Clergy with their Wives after Ordination but also it is most manifest that they abstain not from the company of their Wives by that proviso if her Husband knows that she commit Adultery which otherwise would have been impertinent For it cannot well be imagined that the Adultery of any mans Wife with whom he accompanieth not himself should escape his knowledge A Synod held in Ireland by St. Patrick in the year 450. or 456. decreed That if any Clergy-man from a Sexton to a Priest should be seen without his Coat or if his Wife walked abroad without a Veil upon her head they should be both of them contemned by the Laity and separated from the Church Where it would have been highly unjust to punish the Clergy for the light carriage of their Wives if at their Ordination they renounced the company of their Wives and thenceforth ceased to have any power over them The first Council of Toledo in the year 400. ordered That if the Wives of any Clergy-men were scandalous in their carriage or rather were false to their Beds their Husbands should have power to keep and imprison them in their houses and inâ—…lict any arbitrary punishment upon them which extended not to death But themselves should not so much as eat with them unless they first did penance Whence it appears that before the fault committed they might have eaten with their Wives and even after the fault may again receive them to the usual familiarity of a Wife if they will â—…irst do penance which was in conformity to the antient Canons of the Church which enjoyned that if the Adultery of even any Lay-mans Wife was notorious he should either be bound to put her away or if he will retain her first to do penance lest he should otherwise seem to have consented to and connived at her Adultery An evident Argument of the use of Marriage permitted to the Clergy may be also drawn from the violent and forcible Ordinations of Bishops Priests and Deacons which were frequent in the antient Church For many of these persons thus violently and against their wills ordained were married whose resolutions to abstain from their Wives could not then be known and as all acknowledge could not be forced Or if they should condescend to such a renunciation of the pleasures of Marriage yet was it uncertain whether their Wives would conâ—…ent to it Who if they should dissent they ought not to be defrauded of their Husbands Embraces as all will grant and therefore total abstinence was not universally used by the Clergy while such violent Ordinations were in use I will produce but two Examples of them Paulinus as himself relates being present in the Church of Barcelona upon Christmas-day was suddenly laid hold on by the people dragged to their Bishop Lampius then officiating at the Altar and ordained by him his Wife Therasia not knowing of it till it was done In Africa about the same time Pinianus an illustrious Nobleman of Rome but more famous for his Piety going with his Wife Melania to visit St. Augustin was beset in the Church of Hippo by the people and forced to divert their present intentions by promising them under Hand and Seal before many Witnesses that if they would now dismiss him he would in due time enter into Priests Orders among them This he did his Wife Melania being not only unwilling but even weeping and protesting against it as loath to descend from the pomp of a Roman Lady to the humility of a Priests Wife The Titles which were antiently bestowed upon the Wives of the Clergy are no mean Argument of their cohabitation and continued use of Marriage The Wives of Bishops Priests Deacons and Subdeacons are frequently in the Councils called Bishopesses Priestesses Deaconesses and Subdeaconesses Titles which argue they did not immediately cease to be Wives upon the promotion of their Husbands to those several Orders nor lose all relation to them Rather the first of these Canons enjoyn That a Bishop having no Bishopess no Wife shall not keep any number of women in his Family which plainly intimates that he might admit women into his Family if he had a Wife to preside over them and by her prudent government secure their sobriety Lastly Children are the visible Effects of Marriage and those many Sons of the Clergy which were eminent in the ancient Church manifest there were many more who neither deserved nor obtained any place in History and that the Marriage of the Clergy was then both frequent and honourable I will produce the chief of them In the First Age we have Petronilla Daughter of St. Peter four Virgin-Prophetesses Daughters of Philip the Evangelist and three Daughters of St. Philip the Apostle In the Second Age Marcion the degenerate Son of a Pious and Orthodox Bishop In the Third Age Domnus Son of Dometrianus Bishop of Antioch was made Bishop of that See upon the deprivation of Paulus Samosatenus In the Fourth Age Probus and Metrophanes were the Sons and in order Successours of Dometius Bishop of Bizantium Eustathus Bishop of Sebastea was Son of Eulalius Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia St. Gregory Nazianzen Bishop of Constantinople and Caesarius Count of the Empire and Questor of Bithynia both Sons of Gregory Bishop of Nazianzen Sozomen mentions a great Officer in the Court of Theodosius the Emperour son of Helladius Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia Flavius Dexter Praefectus-Praetorio of the East was the son of Pacianus Bishop of Barcelona Abra daughter of St. Hilary Eulampia daughter of Anicius a Presbyter and Mother of Philostorgius the Historian Apollinaris the learned Bishop of Laodicia son of the no less learned Apollinaris Presbyter of Laodicia Evagrius Ponticus Arch-deacon of Constantinople son of a Presbyter of Iberia Pope Anastatius Son of Maximus a Presbyter In the Fifth Age there was Julianus Bishop of Ecla in Campania son of Memor Bishop of Capua and his Wife Ia daughter of AEmilius Bishop of Beneventum St. Patrick son of Calphurnius a Deacon Leporius Presbyter of Marseilles son of Sulpicius Severus Presbyter of France as some think That Sulpicius was married is evident from his Epistle to Bassula his Mother-in-law Pope Boniface I. son of Secundus Presbyter of Rome Theodulus son of St. Nilus Presbyter of Elusa Auspiciola daughter of Salvian Presbyter of Marseilles Photina an holy virgin daughter of Theoctistus Presbyter of Lâ—…odicea Salonius and Verarius sons of Eucherius Archbishop of Lyons and both Bishops in their Father's life-time Gelasius Cyzicenus Archbishop of Caesarea in Palastine son of a Presbyter in Cyzicum Alcimus Avitus Archbishop of Vien and Apollinaris Bishop of Valence sons of Isicius Archbishop of Vien Superventor a Clergy-man of France son of Claudius a Bishop Pope Foelix III.
son of Foelix Presbyter of Rome so the Liber Pontificalis or of Valerius a Bishop of Africa so Gratian Radulphus de Diceto saith Pope Gelasius I. was son of Valerius a Bishop In the end of this Age Leontia daughter of St. Germanus a Bishop in Africa suffered Martyrdom at Carthage In the Sixth Age Pope Silverius was son of Pope Hormisda Pope Agapetus son of Gordianus Presbyter of Rome Epiphanius Patriarch of Constantinople praised by Justinian the Emperour for his descent from a Priestly Family Chronopius Bishop of Perigord descended from Bishops both by Father and Mother's side Nonnosus the Historian son of Abraamius a Presbyter Sidonius Apollinaris Bishop of Clermont son of Sidonius Bishop of that place Archadius Senator of Clermont son of Sidonius junior Latro Bishop of Laon son of Gerâ—…ardus Bishop of the same place Syagrius son of Desideratus Bishop of Verdun Pope Gregory I. great Grandchild of Pope Foelix IV. In the Seventh Age we find Pope Deusdedit son of Stephen Subdeacon of Rome Pope Theodorus son of Theodorus suffragan Bishop of Hierusalem Samuel the British Historian son of Beulanus Presbyter of Britain In the Eighth Age we have Anchises son of Arnulphus Bishop of Mets Progenitor of the Caroline Family St. Florebert son and successour of St. Hubert Bishop of Leige Gerbilo son and successour of Geroldus Archbishop of Worms In the Ninth Age Pope Hadrian II. son of Talarus an Italian Bishop Pope Marinus son of Palumbus a Presbyter Pope Stephen VI. son of John Presbyter of Rome In the Tenth Age Pope John XIII son of John an Italian Bishop Pope John XV. son of Leo Presbyter of Rome Joannes Cameniata the Historian son of a Presbyter of Thessalonica As for John XI base fon of Sergius III. in this and Hadrian IV. Bastard of Robert Parson of Langley in Hartfordshire in the Twelfth Age they peculiarly belong to the Church of Rome to whose Celibacy they owed their being and to whose shame they possess'd their Thrones In the end of the Seventh Age that undisturbed freedom of Marriage which the Eastern Clergy had hitherto enjoyed suffered some little diminution in the Quinisext Council This was a Council assembled at Constantinople in the Year 692. to supply the defects of the Fifth and Sixth General Councils of which the last was held but eleven years before and neither of them had made Canons for the better government of the Church being wholly taken up with the determination of Matters of Faith. To remedy this defect the Quinisext Council was called which in truth was nothing else but a continuation of the Sixth Council almost the same Bishops being present in both and therefore the Canons of it are commonly cited under the name of the Sixth Council A voluntary abstinence from the use of Marriage was now become common to all the Bishops of the East which is not at all to be wondred at for that custom was already taken up which at this day continueth in the Eastern Church of chusing the Bishops not out of the Secular Clergy but out of Monasteries This voluntary Abstinence therefore being now become universal was in this Council formed into a Law upon occasion of the Bishops of Africa and Libya who still retained the use of Marriage This the Council inhibited to them and all other Bishops for the future professing they did it not in derogation of the ancient Apostolical Discipline but for the greater edification of the Church whereby they acknowledge that the use of Marriage was permitted even to Bishops by the Apostles and that permission continued down in the Church till their times As for the Marriage of Priests and all the other inferiour Clergy the Council only commanded an abstinence from the use of it in the time of the celebration of the more sacred Mysteries of Religion at which times it had been forbidden also to Laymen by the Canons of many Councils Thus only renewing the Third Canon of the Fifth Council of Carthage in all other things they left to the Clergy the free use and enjoyment of their Marriage And not only so but condemned also the practice of the Church of Rome in these words Whereas in the Church of Rome we understand it is prescribed in form of a Canon that those who are to be invested with the Order of Priest or Deacon should promise perpetual abstinence from their Wives we following the ancient Canon of Apostolical Truth and Discipline enact that the lawful cohabitation of the Clergy with their Wives cease not to be accounted valid not daring to dissolve the union between them and their Wives nor depriving either of the convenient Society or Embraces of the other Lest we should thereby be unavoidably injurious to Marriage which God ordained and blessed with his own presence the Holy Gospel pronouncing this Sentence What God hath joyned together let no man put asunder and the Apostle teaching us that Marriage is honourable and the bed undefiled and again Art thou bound unto a Wife seek not to be loosed If any one therefore shall presume against the Apostolical Canons to deprive the Clergy of the lawful company of their Wives let him be deposed This Council was ever held sacred and the Constitutions of it about the Marriage of the Clergy continued down in the Greek Church without variation to this very day That it was an Oecumenical Council the Greeks always believed and the Latins have sometimes confessed For the Church of Rome acknowledgeth the Third Constantinopolitan Council to have been General of which the Quinisext was no more than an Appendix and therefore always accounted part of it The interval of eleven years doth no more prejudice the identity of the two Councils than almost twice that number of years between the first and last Session of the Council of Trent can hinder them from being esteemed parts of the same Council Besides the Church of Rome doth at this day receive the Definitions of the Second Council of Nice and accounts it Oecumenical But this Council expresly confirmed the Sixth General Council and therein also the Quinisext Council For that they accounted the latter to be a part of the former and consequently confirmed both together is manifest because citing the Eighty second Canon of the Quinisext Council they call it the definition of the Holy and Oecumenical Sixth Council Or lastly If the express approbation of a Pope be required to make a Council General neither is that here wanting For Pope Hadrian I. in his Epistle to Tarasius Patriarch of Constantinople citing the same Canon calls it one of the divine and lawfully enacted Canons of the Sixth Synod The Greek Translation is more express which runs thus I receive all the Decrees of this holy Sixth Council with all the Constitutions and Canons divinely enacted by it However that the Church of Rome hath approved this very Custom of the Eastern Church of permitting to
some made it even the business of Christianity it was an unusual abstinence from lawful and permitted Pleasures that procured them Admiration from the Heathen and Honour from their Fellow-Christians But then they really performed what they generously undertook Their Celibacy was no less chast than voluntary their Piety was fully adequate to their Zeal and both perhaps in some things greater than their Knowledge Yet should we even do violence to our Reason and force our Nature to imitate the Examples and receive the Doctrine of those great and holy Persons if either their Consent or their Practice had been universal But on the contrary the Imposition of it hath been condemned by the most Famous Councils and Greatest Writers never used in the Eastern Church not introduced in the Western till almost two hundred years after Christ enjoyned but in some few Provinces of that and even in those not universally practis'd and all this without doing injury to the sacred Bond of Marriage and ever leaving open a refuge for incontinent Persons Not so the Church of Rome which not only adviseth but imposeth Celibacy in many of the Clergy have dissolved Marriage in all descrieth it as Heresie defineth it to be worse than Fornication and to none allows a remedy for Incontinency To demonstate the Injustice of the Church of Rome herein and her departure from the Doctrine and Practice of the Ancient Church shall be the Subject of this present Treatise It is no small presumption of Errour when the Defenders of any Opinion agree not in the merits of the Cause they undertake In the Church of Rome there are Four Opinions about the Celibacy of the Clergy The first that it is of Divine Right Instituted and Commanded by God. So Jo. Major Clichtovaeus and Turrian teach that God hath forbidden Bishops Priests Deacons and Sub-deacons whom we shall hereafter comprehend under the general Name of the Clergy unless when we manifestly distinguish them to Marry or use their Wives already married The second is that of Bellarmine Valentia Vasquez Becanus Aquinas and the far greater part of the Roman Divines that it is not properly of Divine but of Apostolick Right as being instituted by the Apostles and ever since constantly and invariably practised by the Church that a Vow of Continence should be annexed to Holy Orders and consequently that Marriage thereby becomes unlawful to the Clergy without a Dispensation The third without any respect to Divine or Apostolical Institution and Practice of the Ancient Church whether they be here had or not thinks it sufficient that the Church hath Power to impose a Vow of Continence upon the Clergy and that such a Vow being once taken all use of Marriage is become unlawful and subsequent Contracts invalid This seems to be the Opinion of many of the Canonists and the Council of Trent which ventured to define no more than this that Clergy-men or Regulars after a solemn profession of Continence cannot Marry or if they do that their Marriage is unlawful Lastly the more moderate Divines maintain that it is neither of Divine nor Apostolical Right but deriveth all its Obligation from Ecclesiastical Institution which as well as the Vow annexed to it will cease to oblige as soon as the Church shall please although in the mean while she hath sufficient reason to continue her Institution Against these Opinions I shall prove these Four Propositions I. Celibacy of the Clergy was not instituted either by Christ or his Apostles II. It hath nothing excellent in it and bringeth no real advantage to the Church or to the Christian Religion III. The Imposition of it upon any Order of Men is unjust and contrary to the Law of God. IV. It was never universally imposed or practsed in the Ancient Church I. First then that Celibacy was not instituted either by Christ oâ—… his Apostles By Celibacy we mean a perpetual abstinence from the use of the Nuptial Bed in those already Married and not Contracting of Marriage in single Persons after taking of Holy Orders or making a Vow of Chastity That such Celibacy was not at all enjoyned by Christ nor by the Apostles as of Divine Right is sufficiently proved from the dissent of our Adversaries herein For it is the received Opinion of the Church of Rome that nothing can be a matter of Faith such as this would be if it had been commanded by Christ which is doubted and disputed of among the Doctors of the Church Now this is denied by the Maintainers of the Second and Fourth Opinions As for the Third that according to the usual artifice of the latter Popish Councils is so obscurely proposed that it neither directly favours nor opposeth it Besides neither Scripture or Tradition can be offered for this claim of Divine Institution The former is not so much as pretended to or if it be we shall examine it afterwards The latter cannot justly be since none but an universal Tradition of all past and present Ages is sufficient to convey down a matter of Faith whereas here the greatest part even of the present Church deny it But I will not insist upon disproving this as well because it is disowned by the greatest part of our Adversaries as because all the Arguments to be produced against the other Opinions will with much more force be valid against this I will only observe that if this Opinion be either false or uncertain the Infallibility of the Church of Rome is wholly overthrown since many Popes and Councils in the Eleventh Age determined the Celibacy of the Clergy to be of Divine Institution and the lawfulness of their Marriage to be downright Heresie Bellarmine therefore and with him the more Learned of the Church of Rome decline this Plea and assign to this Celibacy a bare Institution of the Apostles acting herein without any particular or express Commission from our Lord but by them prescribed and advised as meritorious itself and convenient to the Church punctually herein followed and obeyed by the Church in all Ages Whether the Church and more especially the Ancient did conform its discipline to this pretended Institution of the Apostles we shall enquire hereafter and by proving that it did not prove also that the Apostles made no such Institution Since the Primitive Church cannot be supposed to have immediately degenerated from the Instructions and Admonitions of her Founders and great Doctors But to pass by that I observe that whether the Apostles instituted Celibacy and ordained a Vow of Continency to be annexed to Holy Orders is a Question of Fact and consequently cannot be infallibly determined by the Church but must be by them clearly proved either from express Texts of Scripture or an universal and invariable Tradition That there is no such Tradition we shall â—…hew in some measure presently and more largely hereafter For Scripture we desire to know where those plain Admonitions of Celibacy to the Clergy are to be found For we
Vow must be annexed to Orders either by Divine Right or only by the Command of the Church If the former that were indeed sufficient but then it is absolutely false as we proved in the first Proposition and Bellarmine expresly acknowledgeth and may be further evinced by this Argument that then neither the Church nor the Pope could grant a Dispensation of Marriage to any of the Clergy If it be annexed only by Ecclesiastical Right or Command of the Church then our former Argument will return with more force For he who in receiving of Orders shall omit to make that tacit Vow will not be guilty of so much as a Lye or Dissimulation He neglected indeed the command of the Church but a Vow he neither made nor pretended to make So that there remains only a presumptive Vow the truth of which resides in every mans breast and conscience So that none ought to be excluded from Marriage by a Vow even supposing it valid and inviolable but those who shall confess they made it And therefore the Author of the Gloss upon the Decretals of Gregory IX professeth that himself and many other Doctors with him cannot imagine how the Clergy of the Western Church can be said to be obliged by Vow to Continence This were enough to silence the Plea of a tacit Vow yet I shall add somewhat more as first The II. Council of Toledo Decrees that none be looked upon to have vowed Continence but those who being asked by the Bishop promise it Coram tota plebe before the whole Congregation And all Councils which command a Vow to be taken by the Clergy at their Ordination order it to be made openly in the face of the whole Church Secondly in the Primitive Church many were Ordained violently and against their wills So St. Augustine tells Donatus That many were apprehended to be ordained Bishops kept in bold against their wills dragged shut up and imprisoned and suffer all this unwillingly till they be forced to receive Ordination So was St. Augustine himself seized npon violently by the people of Hippo dragged to their Bishop Valerius and ordained amidst abundance of tears So Epiphanius ordained Paulinianus Brother of St. Hierom as himself confesleth For seeing him present at Divine Service without the least apprehension of any such violence intended against him he commanded the Deacons to apprehend him and hold his mouth with their hands and in that posture ordained him Deacon and immediately after he had with many Intreaties perswaded him to do somewhat at the Altar belonging to the Office of a Deacon commanded him to be anew apprehended and in the same manner ordained him Priest. Now shall such Clergy-men as these be thought to have made a tacit Vow of Continence at their Ordinations or must they forfeit all right of marrying or if already married must their marriage be dissolved and against their will by the violence of others Thirdly Almost all the Divines of the Church of Rome agree that Children are capable of receiving Holy Orders Many Examples of it have been seen in that Church and at this day great numbers of Children are ordained Priests and Deacons in the Abyssine Church Fourthly Gregory Thaumaturgus was ordained Bishop of Neocaesarea by Phadimus of Amasea absent and not so much as dreaming of it Now shall either he or those Children be presumed to have made a Vow of Continence at their Ordination when the first were not capable of making a Vow the second did not know that he was ordained Lastly Supposing this Vow to have been openly and explicitely made granting it to have been intended and none of all these many necessary Circumstances wanting yet will it not oblige if it be not accepted by God. For that the Vow is made to God not to the Church all agree so that if it be not accepted by God it becomes only a simple Resolution of the Mind which every man hath a right to change as he shall see good Now we cannot be assured God accepts this Vow unless it be either for some excellency and holiness in Celebacy or because himself commanded it both which we before disproved Nay rather seeing it draws many into open Incontinency and exposeth all to the danger of it it is prejudicial to the honour of God to imagine that he accepts much less delights in such Vows At least there is no promise of acceptance and therefore the Obligation of these Vows will ever be uncertain I pass to the Second Proposition that a Vow of Continence obligeth not in case of insuperable Incontinence For no man can be obliged by Vow or even the greatest Authority upon Earth to commit a sin which in this case will be inevitable unless the Vow be violated And that cases of insuperable Incontinence without the use of Marriage may and do often happen I proved before when I demonstrated that all cannot contain And certainly if in temporal Affairs no Vow Contract or Promise obligeth in case of a natural impossibility much more will it not oblige in case of moral impossibility by how much the Vertues of the Soul are of more concern than the conveniencies of the Body But I will not further enlarge upon this Argument which is in it self so evident I choose rather to observe that it is highly probable that not only in case of impossibility but even of great and apparent difficulty a Vow of Continence ceaseth to oblige For first all the Defenders of the Pope's dispensing power proceed upon this foundation that Circumstances may alter the Obligation of a Vow and that when a greater good is to be attained it ceaseth to oblige And indeed this is highly reasonable For if circumstances can alter the nature of Actions as to Vice and Vertue which is on all hands granted then a Vow which in some circumstances may be laudable or at least lawful may in others become unlawful or at least not obligatory Now in case of violent although perhaps not insuperable temptations of Incontinence after a Vow of Chastity the circumstances of him that Vows are altered and by violating the Vow a greater good may be attained serenity of Mind freedom from unruly Passions and an escape from the danger of Sin. Not in this only but in many other cases also the diversity of circumstances may change the Obligation of a Vow Whence Aquinas determines That Because in matters belonging to himself a Man is easily deceiv'd in judging it is most fit such Vows should be either observed or omitted according to the pleasure of his Superiour yet so that if any great or manifest inconvenience should arise from the observation of such a Vow and there were no opportunity of recurring to the Superior a Man ought not to keep such a Vow Secondly It is acknowledged even in the Church of Rome that a Vow of Continence made by one married Person without the consent of the other is null and
confirmed by any Pope or Council to this day But I doubt not to evince that this Canon is to be thus understood only of a temporary abstinence of the Clergy while they performed their Office in their turns For the Clergy had not then as now each one his Parish assigned him wherein to officiate but all of one City at least in the lesser Cities belonging to one Church supplied the necessities of the Church in Order and relieved one the other by turns That this Canon is to be thus understood appeareth 1. From the plain words of it where Positis in ministerio must either signifie this or be wholly impertinent since all the Clergy by the very nature of their Office are placed in the Ministry of the Church 2. Otherwise total Abstinence will be enjoyned to Subdeacons Readers Exorcists and Acolythi as well as to Bishops Priests and Deacons and so Albaspinaeus explains the words in totum prohiberi it is forbidden saith he to all Clergy-men whatsoever Whereas Subdeacons were never forbidden the use of Marriage till the middle of the Fifth Age and the three inferiour Orders are not at this day forbidden it in the Church of Rome 3. When a total Abstinence of Bishops Priests and Deacons was proposed in the Council of Nice all the Historians of that Council express it by saying some endeavoured to introduce 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a new and unheard of Law and Paphnutius opposing it pleaded that the Church ought not to be burdened with new Impositions but that the universal Tradition and practice of it was to be preserved Now if this total Abstinence had twenty years before been imposed by the Council of Eliberis all those Historians had mistaken and Hosius Bishop of Corduba who had been present in the Council of Eliberis and presided in that of Nice would not have suffered the Fathers to be led away with the false representations of Paphnutius Celibacy was not yet arrived at its Crisis universally indeed applauded but no where imposed yet had the unreasonable affection of it in many Clergy-men and an immoderate Ambition of the honour of Virginity in many Lay Persons already introduced two of the most enormous Scandals that ever the Church laboured under from the Apostles to this day I mean Emasculation and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 These 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were unmarried Women commonly those who had vowed perpetual Virginity taken into the house as Domestick Assistants by Clergy-men who had either never married or buried their Wives or unmarried Men commonly of the Clergy taken into the House in the same Quality by Women or Virgins who had vowed Continence We want a proper English word to express them and therefore must be content to call them House-keepers they were called by the Greeks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but most commonly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which name was first given by the people of Antioch to the House-keepers of Paulus Samosatenus their Bishop and his Clergy by the Latins they were termed Subintroductae Adscititiae Extraneae Alienae Dilectae Sorores Commanentes and Focariae They were taken in by most under pretence of Piety to encourage and assist one another by Spiritual Conference and Exhortations but by all upon pretence of Domestick Assistance that the Men might defend the Women from all injuries to which otherwise that weak Sex is exposed and the Women might provide Necessaries for the Men and take care of their Families Some perhaps made good their Pretences by a sober and prudent Conversation but the greatest part indulged to themselves the most inward Familiarities of Man and Wife and made them even the Companions of their sleep where they used all the Embraces Caresses and Allurements of the Nuptial Bed save only Carnal Knowledge And all this they openly maintained to be lawful and thought it not injurious to their Profession of Virginity and the integrity of their Chastity But some proceeded farther and by visible effects discovered the Approaches of a nearer Familiarity and more â—…lose Embraces to their own Shame and the great Scandal of the Church Others finding or fearing they should not be able to contain in the midst of so great Temptations For can a Man take Fire into his Bosom and not be burnt as the Fathers frequently applied to this Case emasculated themselves that they might at least prevent all visible Scandal when they could not extinguish the Fire of their Minds Thus did Leontius the Arian Bishop of Antioch for the love of Eustolium his Paramour and that the abuse was frequent even among the Catholicks appears from all the Writers of those times especially the Author of the Book De singularitate Clericorum and St. Basil's Treatise of true Virginity where he eloquently describes and bewails the scandalous familiarity of these Eunuchs and House-keepers See two egregious Scandals the immediate effects even of a voluntary Celibacy in the antient Church greater than any which the Church now suffers in the dregs of time We needed not say any more of them if the unreasonable wills of our Adversaries did not necessitate us to clear the Matter a little farther They maintain that by these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were meant also the Wives of the Clergy a pretence which however shameless and foolish was the main Engine of advancing Celibacy in the latter Age when the Authority of all those Councils which had forbidden House-keepers to the Clergy was produced against their Marriage and the ignorance of those Ages had sitted them for a miserable Delusion by such Impostures To pass by then the Confession of some learned Writers of the Church of Rome and the constant practice of the Eastern Church which always forbids House-keepers but never Wives to the Clergy I will only oppose a few Passages of the Antient Writers St. Cyprian lamenting the folly of many consecrated Virgins who had entred into the Families and even into the Beds of unmarried Clergy-men saith Lastly how grievous falls of many do we see hereby produced and with extreme grief behold the corruption of many Virgins by these unlawful and dangerous familiarities Wherefore if they desire the reward of Virginity let them be Virgins in good earnest but if they will not or cannot contain let them Marry The Author of the Book De Singularitate Clericorum hath these words Why hath he taken a House-keeper who scorned to marry a Wife So he who despised the Bond of Marriage and yet retains the familiarity of Women although he be not actually polluted yet enjoy them by Imagination Sight Conversation and Society St. Gregory Nazianzen professeth he knows not whether to call them married or unmarried Persons since in an unmarried State they performed the Duties of Marriage St. Chrysostom in like manner saith They are neither Wives nor Concubines but a middle kind unknown to former Ages and thus bespeaks them If you desire to have Men
of Marriage drawn from the old Mistake of an unworthiness to administer things contracted by the supposed impurity of Marriage commandeth Priests and Deacons thence forward to abstain from the company of their Wives upon pain of Deposition from their Offices From the Preface of this Constitution it appears that the Use of Marriage was then indifferently used by the Clergy and defended as Lawful against the Oppugners of it I understand saith Siricius that many Priests and Deacons have a long time after their Ordination had Children as well by their own Wives as by Fornication and defend this their Doing by Prescription because in the Old Testament Marriage was permitted to the Priests It seems to have been by this time become a general Custom in the particular Church of Rome and all the greater Churches of Italy for Bishops Priests and Deacons to abstain from the company of their Wives This they did voluntarily there being yet no Ecclesiastical Constitution to enforce it and in that case removed their Wives out of their Families and lived separately from them That this was voluntarily is manifest as well because no Command of any such Abstinence as yet made by the Church can be produced as from several Examples of the Italian Clergy of this time who enjoyed the company of their Wives after Ordination as we shall hereafter prove That this Custom extended not into the remoter Provinces is manifest from the words of St. Ambrose who writ about this time and persuading this total Abstinence to his Clergy of Milan saith In many remoter places the Clergy beget Children in the time of their Deaconship or even Priesthood and this they defend by Ancient Custom where the last words are very remarkable Siricius therefore seduced with the common Prejudices of that Age and imagining it to be no small Crime in the Clergy of Spain not to canform to the Customs of Rome interposed his Authority and commanded them to do that which he saw they would never perform of their own accord The embracing of the Vulgar Prejudices about Celibacy are not the only argument of Siricius his simplicity This very Epistle carrieth other evident tokens of it along with it For to omit the many Superstitious Cautions about the Marriage of the Inferior Clergy he forbids Marriage to all Persons whatsoever who had ever done publick Penance for Fornication A Command which wholly evacuates the Apostles Precept of Marriage making Fornication an impediment of Marriage which by the Apostle was assigned as a remedy of it The next year Siricius writing to the Bishops of Africa pursueth the same design but here remembring that he acted out of his own Patriarchate he presumeth not to command but only adviseth Celibacy I persuade advize admonish intreat that Priests and Deacons would not accompany with their Wives And all upon the same topick of the Incongruity of conjugal Embraces with the Priestly Office. Let us now see what effect this Command of Siricius had in Spain or his Admonition in Africk In Spain the first Council of Toledo was held in the Year 400. which decreed That those Deacons who had not abstained from their Wives after Ordination should continue in their Office but be made incapable of ever rising to the Priesthood and in like manner Priests who had not abstained should be incapable of the Episcopal Dignity inflicting on them no further Punishment The same Command had it seems been sent by Siricius to the Bishops of Piemont who meeting in a Council at Turin An. Dom. 397. made a Canon of the same nature with that of Toledo only debarring the Clergy who would not submit to a total Abstinence from ascending to higher Dignities in the Church In Africa the Pope received a Repulse The Eleventh Council of Carthage was in the year 390. wherein a motion was made by Faustianus the Popes Legat that Bishops Priests and Deacons should be enjoyned to total Abstinence The Synod would not yeild to that but only decreed That Bishops Priests and Deacons or those who administred the Sacraments should always preserve Chastity and when they ministred at the Altar even abstain from their Wives For that the Antients believed Chastity not to be inconsistent with the use of Marriage we before proved And this partial Abstinence of the Clergy in the time of their waiting at the Altar fully satisfied Siricius his Argument which proceeded upon the indecency of performing the Duties of Marriage and the Administration of Holy Things at the same time That this is the trne sense of the Canon we shall demonstrate by proving that the Canon which we shall next relate meant no more For that both are to be understood in the same sense all agree In the year therefore 398. was held the Fifth Council of Carthage which made this following Canon Be it enacted That Bishops Priests and Deacons abstain even from their Wives in their own courses Which if they do not let them be deposed But that the rest of the Clergy be not compelled to do this but the customs of every particular Church are to be observed Bellarmin Binius and other Writers of the Church of Rome maintain that a total Abstinence is here enjoyned to the Clergy contrary to the plain sense of the Canon For this they alledge only the Authority of St. Austin and tht Decree of Gratian which instead of Secundum propria statuta wherein the stress of the Canon lieth reads Secundnm priora Statuta according to former Constitutions As for the Authority of Gratian that is of no Moment when opposed to the constant Agreement of all the Latin Copies of the Acts of this Council Nor even can we be assured that Gratian's Copy read it Secundum priora Statuta since it is very usual with him to represent the Antient Monuments of the Church not exactly in their own Words but accommodated to the Sentiments and Practice of his own time As for St. Austin his Authority indeed would be sufficient for he was present in the Council but he saith nothing of it in the place alledged only proposeth to the Laity who hardly endured to be restrained to the Embraces of one Woman the Example of the Clergy who practised a total Astinence For this infers no more than that some or many of the Clergy did totally abstain which none denieth and we readily grant The confutation of our Adversaries Reasons were sufficient in this case However I will produce some further Reasons in confirmation of that sense of the Canon which we follow and the words do naturally import First then The Antient Greek Code of the Canons of the African Church compsosed before the time of the Sixth Council followeth this sense translating the Words into Question by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in their proper courses or times of waiting Secondly the Fathers of the Quinisext Council commanding Priests and Deacons wholly to contain in the time
Clergy He commandeth Priests and Deacons for Subdeacons he mentions not who abstained not from their Wives in Obedience to the Constitution of Siricius to be deposed except perhaps they had been ignorant of the Constitution For in that case he would only have them obliged to Continence for the future That these and indeed all the first Twenty Six Epistles of this Pope are spurious many learned Men have endeavoured to prove with many Arguments But I will not insist on that It is not improbable that he made such a Decree Celibacy was then fitted to the Genius of the Age and particularly of the See of Rome After Innocent Pope Leo I. carried on the Design yet further and in an Epistle to Anastasius Bishop of Thessalonica forbid the use of Marriage to Subdeacons also thereby perfecting the System of Celibacy at this Day used in the Church of Rome The same Constitution he re-inforced in an Epistle to Rusticus Bishop of Narbon prescribing the same Law of Continence to the Ministers of the Altar viz. Deacons and Subdeacons as to Bishops and Priests These were the Decrees of the Popes of Râ—…me which were oâ—…t-times renewed and sometimes relaxed by the following Popes As for the Western Councils of this and the following Ages they were all Provincial and pretended to no Authority out of their own Provinces The Council of Orange was the first which ever imposed total Abstinence upon the Clergy It was a Convention of no more than Seventeen Bishops in the Year 441. who then made this Canon If any one after he hath received Deacons Orders be found incontinent with his Wife Let him be deposed from his Office. Providing in the following Canon that this Punishment extend not to those who had retained the use of their Wives before this Canon was made Whence it may be gathered that total Abstinence was not yet enjoyned to the Clergy of the Gallican Church by any Publick Authority and that the Decrees of Pope Innocent directed to the Bishops of Roan and Tholouse as acting out of his own Patriarchat had not been received The Second Council of Arles in the Year 452. comes next which in the Second Canon forbids any married Man to be ordained Priest who doth not vow Continence in the Forty Third Canon extends the same to Deacons in the Forty Fourth Canon forbids to Deacons the use of Marriage in the Words of the Council of Orange in the Third Canon forbids Bishops Priests and Deacons to keep their VVives with them in the same House unless they also have vowed Continence upon pain of Excommunication This Punishment was thought too great and was therefore moderated by the First Council of Tours A. D. 461. who enjoyning total Abstinence from their VVives to Priests and Deacons enact withal That if any Priest or Deacon use the Company of his VVife he be not excommunicated but only reduced to Lay-Communion In the year 506. the Council of Agatha received and confirmed the Constitutions of Siricius and Innocent about the Continence of Priests and Deacons and further enjoyn that their VVives be not permitted to dwell with them although they also promise Continence In the year 531. the Second Council of Toledo decreed That those who from their Childhood were by their Parents dedicated to the Holy Office and were to that end brought up at the Charge of the Church should when they came to the Age of Eighteen be asked publickly by the Bishop in the face of the Church VVhether they were willing to oblige themselves never to marry If they were then they might be ordained Subdeacons and gradually arise to the higher Offices of the Church If not then they might have leave to marry and whensoever both married Parties should promise Continence the Husband should be received into Orders Here is the first mention of a Vow of Continence exacted of those that were to be ordained that can be found in Ecclesiastical History And here also it was first forbidden to Subdeacons to marry VVives after their Ordination for this concerned not those Subdeacons who married before Ordination whereas in all the precedent Councils it was left free to Subdeacons as well as to the other inferiour Orders to enjoy their Wives married either before or after their Ordination to that Office. The Council of Clermont Anno 535. complaining that many Priests and Deacons notwithstanding the Prohibition of the Church had used the Company of their Wives and begotten Children of them commands all such to be degraded from their Office. The Fourth Council of Orleans in the year 541. ordered That Priests and Deacons should not be permitted to dwell with their Wives upon pain of Deposition thereby to take away ever all suspicion of forbidden Commerce The Third Council of Orleans had before in the year 538. forbid the use of Marriage not only to Priests and Deacons but also to Subdeacons The Fifth Council of Orleans commands all Clergy-men of whatsoever Dignity or Order who return to the Embraces of their Wives after Ordination to be for ever degraded and reduced to Lay-Communion The Council of Auxerre in the year 578. enjoyn Priests Deacons and Subdeacons upon pain of Deprivation not to accompany with their Wives calling that a carnal Sin. The First Council of Mascon in the year 581. repeat and renew the Canon of the Council of Clermont The Third Council of Lyons in the year 583. forbids the use of Marriage to Bishops Priests Deacons and Subdeacons and the cohabitation of their Wives to the three first Orders In a French Council about the year 620. all Marriage and cohabitation of Women was forbidden to Priests and Deacons In the Fourth Council of Toledo Anno 633. it was ordered That Priests and Deacons should promise Continence before their Bishop when they were inducted into their Livings and Preferments The Eighth Council of Toledo in the year 653. laments the Obstinacy of many Priests and Deacons retaining their Wives and even marrying after Ordination against the Canons of the Church and severely forbids it for the future In the year 868. the Council of Worms commanded Bishops Priests Deacons and Subdeacons to abstain from their Wives upon pain of Deprivation Many other Councils between the year 600 and a 1000. forbid the Cohabitation of all Women and consequently also of VVives to the Clergy And many others permit only Mothers Sisters and Aunts to dwell with the Clergy rejecting all other VVomen under the Name of Extraneae wherein they seem to have mistaken the meaning of the Third Canon of the Council of Nice Lastly some Councils proceeded so far as to inhibit to the Clergy the Cohabitation of all VVomen whatsoever even Mothers Sisters Aunts and the nearest Relations permitted by the Council of Nice Thus did the Council of Mentz in the year 888. observing that some Priests had committed Incest with their own Sisters see
should hear Mass from nor communicate with a married Priest. These Constitutions he vigorously endeavoured to put in execâ—…tion by force of Arms Threats and Flattery thundering out Excommunications against those Bishops who blindly employed not their whole power and interest to execute his commands By these violent methods he obtained the confirmation of his Decrees from the Council of Poictou in the year 1078. of Islebonne the same year of Quintilineburg in the year 1085. and many other Provincial Councils Most of the succeeding Popes pursued the same Design and many Councils seconded them in it as that of Melphi in the year 1089. Clermont 1095. and others not worthy a particular relation The force and violence which these Popes and Bishops used to separate the Clergy from their Wives is known to all who have conversed in the Histories of those times But their frauds and impostures gross ignorance and trifling prejudices deserve a more particular consideration The mistakes and errors of precedent Ages which they adopted and improved need no repetition I will insist upon those only which were peculiar to this and the former Age. An universal ignorance had fitted the minds of men to be abused and deceived and the Patrons of Celibacy failed not to make use of this advantage They pretended the Marriage of the Clergy to be in it self null and void and therefore in their Decrees and Canons gave to the Wives of the Clergy no other name than that of Concubines and ever termed their Marriage Adultery Concubinacy and the inveterate Disease of Fornication of the Clergy Many had before forbid Marriage to the Clergy but none had yet dared to call the use of it Fornication which Clemens Alex. affirms to be an opposition of the Law and Gospel and no other than downright Blasphemy Then was the Third Canon of the Council of Nice alledged in against the Marriage of the Clergy and all the spurious Decretals of ancient Popes the late Forgeries of Isidore Mercator produced in favour of the imposition of Celibacy which fraud is at this day continued by the Writers of the Church of Rome who are not ashamed to cite the Epistles of Pope Calixtus the First the Roman Council under Pope Silvester the Acts of Paul and Tecla the History of Abdias and many other spurious Writings the product of latter Ages or foolish Impostors Another artifice was then set on foot which nothing but the highest impudence could devise or maintain and that was to accuse the Greek Church of imposing Marriage upon the Clergy pretending the 13th Canon of Quinisext Council had decreed none should be admitted into Priests Orders who had not first married a Wife This calumny also is espoused by the present Writers of the Church of Rome and particularly Bellarmin who could not but know the falseness of it and that Marriage is no where made necessary to the Clergy but in the Church of Russia The imputation of Heresie to the defenders of the Clergies Marriage was started in this Age and the opprobrious titles of Nicolaites fastned on them This new Heresie is thus described by Petrus Damiani the great Agent of the Popes in the cause of Celibacy The Nicolaites are those Clergy-men who against the rule of ecclesiastical chastity accompany with Women who then truly become fornicators when they adde Marriage to this unlawful Society and are then deservedly called Nicolaites when they defend as lawful this mortal Heresie Lastly to crown these Impostures Miracles were forged as the most proper artifice to impose upon mankind in a superstitious Age when that cause was triumphant not which was most rational but whose followers could by a pretence of Miracles delude the World with greater art and impudence Hence the admired Fable of the 1100 Virgin Martyrs the imposture of the Crucifix in the Synod of Canterbury openly giving its Vote for Dunstan against the married Clergy and the whole Colledge of married Priests of Elingen turned into Eels when by the favour of the Emperour they retained their Wives against the threats and curses of the Pope with a thousand other ridiculous tales which might terrifie the married Clergy amuse the credulous multitude and advance the interest of the greedy Monks who then built their fortunes apace upon the ruins of the secular Clergy But to give an evident testimony of the Frauds and Impostures which promoted Celibacy in this Age I will instance in an Anonymous Author of this time whom the Collectors of the Councils thought worthy to insert into their Edition and who if I be not mistaken was the first that ever dared affirm the Celibacy of the Clergy to be of Divine or Apostolical Institution This Writer in an Apology for the Decrees of Hildebrand published in the Roman Synod Anno 1074. pleads the cause of the Imposition of Celibacy In his Plea he alledgeth the Third Canon of Nice the First of Neocaesarea and the Decretals of Silvester Whatsoever is said by St. Hierom or other ancient Fathers against the Housekeepers he applies to the Wives of the Clergy Affirms Nicolas the Heresiarch to have been the first Author and Introducer of the Clergies Marriage Reckons Paulus Samosatenus condemned and deposed by the Synod of Antioch for his scandalous use of Housekeepers among the defenders of their Marriage Urgeth all the spurious Decretals of ancient Popes Alexander the First Clement and others and doubts not to affirm from Clemens Alex. that Nicolas the Deacon prostituted his Wife to the lust of all persons whenas that learned Father relates the direct contrary as we before shewed No wonder then if amidst so gross ignorance and shameless impostures when the interest of the See of Rome required and the ambition of the whole Monastick Order promoted it when forged Decretals were received and foolish Miracles believed when antient Canons were securely falsified and the practice of other Churches mis-represented when the Bishops and ruling part of the Clergy were either taken out of Monasteries or otherwise at the devotion of the Court of Rome Celibacy triumphed and the Marriage of the Clergy was decried and run down The lamentable and scandalous effects of these proceedings are at large related by the Historians of those times which I will here only briefly touch Matthew Paris and Radulphus de Diceto having related Pope Gregory the Seventh's prohibition of Marriage to the Clergy use these words Hence arose so great a scandal that not even in the time of any Heresie had the Church ever been divided with a more grievous Schism one Party contending for Justice the otheâ—…â—…gainst it Besides few of the Clergy preserving Continence some dissembling their Lust either for Gain or Vain-glory but many aggravating their Incontinence with Perjury and continual Adultery The Laity refused to receive the Sacraments from married Priests burnt the Tythes due to them and oftentimes trod under foot the Body of our Lord consecrated by
them and oft-times voluntarily spilt the consecrated Bloud upon the ground In Germany as Nauclerus relateth upon the prohibition of hearing the Masses of married Priests the Laity were forced to administer the Sacraments themselves and baptize their own Children This scandal arose much higher in England where when the same prohibition was by the procurement of Anselm enacted in a National Synod all Divine Service was for want of unmarried Priests generally discontinued in Parochial Churches and the Church-doors overgrown with Thorns As for the scandalous incontinence and uncleanness of the Clergy that is not much to be admired being the natural effect of imposed Celibacy But it may be justly wondred that while the Pope engaged with so much violence against the Marriage of the Clergy they willingly overlook'd and conniv'd at their Fornications and prodigious Impurities of Life This Petrus Damiani himself assures us and affirms it to be the custom of the Church of Rome in his time severely to exact other points of Ecclesiastical Discipline but to connive at and dispense with the Lust of the Clergy which was then become so brutal and notorious that he writ a Book entituled Gomorrhaeus particularly upon that subject This alone might justifie what we before observed that the Church of Rome imposed Celibacy upon the Clergy not for increase of Piety or advancemenâ—… of Purity but only for temporal ends and secular advantages However the Marriage of the Clergy wanted not Defendeâ—…s in this Age to maintain its right against the calumnies and tyranny of its Adversaries The Decrees of the Popes were condemned by some Councils universally opposed by the Clergy of all Nations and gained not success till a long and sharp contention In the year 1061. the Bishops of Lombardy by the instigation of Guibert Bishop of Parma met in a Council at Basil wherein they annulled the Decrees of Pope Nicolas and decreâ—…d That no Pope should be obeyed who would not 〈◊〉 and yield to their Infirmities About the same time the Clergy of Laon being urged by Petrus Damiani to put away their Wives produced in their defence a Decree of the Council of Tribur which permitted the use of Marriage to the Clergy Several Councils were heâ—…l at Tâ—…ibur in this Age of whose Acts we have little or no account left and therefore cannot 〈◊〉 the time of this Council The Synod of 〈◊〉 we shall mention afterwards when we come to the Affairs of England In the year 1080. Gregory the Seventh was condemned and deposed in the Council of Brixia as well for other crimes as because hâ—… had â—… Divorâ—…es between married persons to use the words of the Historian or had violently separated the married Clergy from their Wives To these we may add the Council of Beneventum held eleven years after by Urban the Second which permitted Marriage to Subdeacons as we before observed and the great Lateran Council under Innoâ—…ent the Third of which more hereafter If many Bishops disliked annulled and miâ—…igated the Papal Decrees of Celibacy with much morâ—… violence although with less authority did the inferiour Cleâ—…gy oppose this unjust Imposition Particularly 〈◊〉 Hildebrand published his Decrees the Historian saith The Clâ—…rgy were in a rage crying out the 〈◊〉 was plainly a Heretick and maintainer of mad Opinions who forgetting those words of Christ All 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tâ—…is and â—…e that cannot contain let him marry would by a violent exaction compel men to live the life of Angels and while he stopped the wonted course of Nature let loose the Reins to a promisâ—…uous Lust. 〈◊〉 the learned Monk of Gemblacâ—… writ to Henry Archdeacon of Leige a peculiar Tâ—…eatise or Apology against those who sâ—…andered or condemned the Masses of married Priests as himself tells us which is now lost The same Author in another place giveâ—…h this judgment of the Decree of Pope Gregory That it was made by an unheard-of Example and inconsiderate prejudice against the Doctrine of the Holy Fathers Matthew Paris useth the same words In Germany the Clergy opposed the Papal Decrees with great courage and animosity rejected the perswasion of their Bishops wanted little of tearing in pieces the Popes Legate who proposed to them the imposition of Celibacy and when at last by the violence of their Adversaries forced to submit chused rather to quit their Office than their Wives In France the Clergy of Laon rejected the Sollicitations of Petruâ—… Damiaâ—…i Of England we shall speak more largely afterwards In Italy Damiaâ—…us being sent to Milan by Nicolas the Second in the year 1059. to subject that See to the Obedience of the Church of Rome and the Clergy to the Yoak of Celibacy could effect neither without great commotions For as himself writ back to the Pope the people and Clergy contended with great heat that the Ambrosian See owed no Obedience to the Bishop of Rome and that the Law of Celibacy was unjust and intolerable Mr. Fox in his English Martyrology hath published two antient Latin Apologies for the Marriage of the Clergy under the name of Volusianus Bishop of Carthage both directed to Pope Nicolas The first which is short is nothing else but the Epistle of Huldericus before mentioned which hath been often published The second is far longer was never elsewhere published and seems to have been the Remonstrance or Apology of all the married Clergy of the Western Church offered to Pope Nicolas the Second and the other Bishops of the Church who endeavoured to impose Celibacy presently after the Roman Synod in the year 1059. which forbid the Laity to hear Mass from the married Clergy The Author of it writes far more elegantly and argues more strongly than Huldericus and indeed abating some allegorical interpretations of Scripture the peculiar Genius of those Ages it may be accounted a rational and exact Treatise The sum of it is this That Continence is the peculiar Gift of God not bestowed upon all which therefore cannot be commanded That no Vow or Gift is grateful to God but what is voluntary not compelled That it savoured of Judaism to impose such burdens upon men under the Gospel That the Governours of the Church were not invested with an arbitrary power nor could lay such grievous impositions on the Clergy against their will. That this Yoak was imposed for vain ostentation and worldly ends That although many of the inferiour Clergy were awed by Force Authority Threats or Anathema's to submit to this Imposition yet they unwillingly underwent the burden of Celibacy and hated the cross laid upon them because they bore it rather to their destruction than salvation That from the imposition of Celibacy greater inconveniencies arose Sodomy Adultery Fornication Incest and other horrid Lusts. That Marriage is the only Remedy assigned by God to incontinent persons which they who contemn and affect a greater shew of perfection commonly fall into precipices That the Apostle commandeth that to avoid Fornication every man
Fornication Thus have we brought down the History of the Imposition of Celibacy to its Final Period I mean the Universal Reception of it in the Western Church towards the end of the Fourteenth Age when the Marriage of the Clergy fell from a general into a total disuse and was thenceforth compelled to take refuge in the name and disgrace of Fornication What a deluge of Lusts and Impurities overflowed the Christian World when Celibacy became triumphant and Marriage was exploded may easily be imagined Such deplorable Scandals of the Church I should willingly pass under silence and not provoke the anger of our Adversaries by the rehearsal of so sad a truth if the nature of my design did not require me to say somewhat of it which yet I will propose with all modesty and brevity I will not here upbraid to our Adversaries the noted Tragedy of Pope Gregory's Fish-ponds although related by Haldericus more than 800 years since nor the more famous story of Pope Joan although attested by more than twenty eight Historians before the Reformation I will not object to them the Incredible Bestialities and Horrible Lusts of the Popes of the Tenth Age nor insist upon the Infamous Impurities of private Churchmen I will produce only a few General Testimonies of the Writers of latter times Alvarus Pelagius Bishop of Silva in Portugal in the beginning of the Fourteenth Age wisheth that the Glergy had never vowed Chastity especially the Clergy of Spain wherein the Sons of the Laity were not much more numerous than the Sons of the Clergy About the same time Durandus junior Bishop of Mimatum in France proposing means for the reformation of the Church adviseth among other things that it were ordered that Publick Stews might not be kept near great Churches nor in the Court of Rome next to the Palace of the Pope nor in other Places near the Houses of Bishops In the next Age Gerson affirms that either incontinent Priests must be tolerated or none can be had and therefore that it were more convenient for the Church that Concubines should be publickly permitted to the Clergy than that the Lâ—…ity should be forbidden to hear the Masses of incontinent Priests Glemangis relates that in many Diocesses the Priests giving a set and determinate price to their Bishops publickly and openly kept Concubines This scandal of selling Licenses of Concubinacy to the Clergy proceeded so far that in Germany the Bishops and their Officers not only granted those Licences for a certain sum of money to all who asked them but also forced those Clergy-men to take them who neither desired noâ—… intended to make use of them In Switzerland it was the custom in many Cantons in the times of Popery that whensoever they received a new Pastour they obliged him to take a Concubine that he might not attempt the chastity of Virgins and Matrons The same reason induced the Senate of Rome when Pius V. intended to put down the publick Stews to intercede and petition for the continuation of them as well to gratifie the Clergy who incited them as to prevent greater scandals justly fearing the honour of their Wives and Daughters if the Lust of the unmarried Clergy were diverted from the wonted channel To say no more the Adulteries Fornications Sodomies and Bestialities discovered in our Monasteries at their dissolution are an evident demonstration of this sad truth The Author of Onus Ecclesiâ—… who was John Suffragan Bishop of Saltzburg and writ just before the Reformation saith There were very few Gurates in Germany who did not wallow in the filth of Conoubinacy and that The Nunneries in his time were as publickly prostituted as the common Stews And lest we should imagin the Romish Clergy to have observed a greater Purity since the Reformation than before the Fornications and Incest of Paul III. the Soâ—…omies of Julius III. and incestuous Commerce of Innocent X. with his Brothers Wife Olimpia are yet fresh in the memory of all men of the latter of which Abbot Gualdi confesfeth that the Histories of former Ages cannot produce a scandal so enormous or an unlawful love so immoderate which made him for her sake to forfeit both the Reputation of his Person and the Honour of the Church I will produce but one Example more but that related by the Doctors of the Sorbon and consequently undeniable to our Adversaries In a Visitation made in the year 1619. by the Bishop of Serzane at the command of Pope Paul V. it was found that among the Ecclesiasticks of three large Provinces Stiria Carinthia and Carniola who had all been bred up under the severe Discipline of the Jesuits there were found only six Priests who kept not Concubines Nor did the imposition of Celibacy infect only the Morals of the Roman Clergy but also corrupted their judgment and by that means introduced far greater scandals into the Church when Concubinacy and other unnatural Lusts being become universal they employed their Wits to prevent their own shame by proving those Villanies not to be unlawful For to pass by an Encomium or Apology of Sodomy published by John Casa Archbishop of Beneventum and Legate of the Pope to omit the Complaint of Gualter Mapes That the Priests insinuated into silly women a fear of damnation if they denied their Embraces to them it cannot be denied that many latter Casuists of the Church of Rome have asserted That Fornication committed only for the sake of Health or evacuation of an extimulant Humour is not unlawful and that most of them teach that simple Fornication is no deadly sin I will alledge only one instance of these scandalous Maxims but that proceeding from the Head of the Romish Church and related by Wesselus of Groningen a learned and pious Divine of that Church Pope Sixtus IV. out of the fulness of Apostolick power gave a License to the whole Family of the Cardinal of St. Lucia to commit Sodomy in the three hotter months of the year with this clause Let it be done as it is desired The sense and scandal of so many Lusts Impurities and Bestialities daily committed by the unmarried Clergy induced many great and learned men of the Church of Rome to advise the abrogation of the Laws of Celibacy and permission of Marriage to the Clergy Panormitan giveth his opinion in these words It is enquired whether the present Church can enact that a Clergy-man may contract Marriage as the Greeks do I answer It may And I do not only believe that the Church hath a power of decreeing this but I also believe that this would be a wholsom Constitution for the good and salvation of Souls Pope Pius II. confessed That there were indeed former causes why Marriage should be taken from the Clergy but now much greater causes why it ought to be restored Polydor Vergil delivers his Judgment thus This I will affirm That this enforced Chastity
A TREATISE OF THE CELIBACY OF THE CLERGY WHEREIN ITS Rise and Progress Are Historically Considered 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Epiphan Haeres XLIII in init LONDON Printed by H. Clark for James Adamson at the Angel and Crown in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1688. THE PREFACE AMong the Errours and Corruptions of the Church of Rome there are such which have neither any foundation nor shew of Antiquity but are the meer Inventions of latter ignorant and barbarous Ages Others which obtained not indeed in the Ancient Church but arose from the degeneracy of some Belief or Corruptiin of some Practice received and used by the Ancient Christians Of the first sort are Transubstantiation Half-Communion Supremacy of the Pope Worship of Images and the like groundless Opinions and Practices which the Antient Church never thought of much less admitted Of the latter kind are Invocation of Saints which arose from an extraordinary Veneration paid to the Memory and Reliques of blessed Saints and Martyrs degenerating in latter Ages into downright Superstition and Impiety Purgatory advanced from a Belief generally received in the Ancient Church that the Souls of the departed are not admitted to the beatisical Vision before the Day of Judgment into a foolish Opinion of a Fictitious Place of Torment which might receive them in that interval of time And Infallibility of Councils raised from an external Submission of ancient Christians to their Decrees into an Obligation of yielding an internal Assent to their Definitions The Beginnings and Rise of the Errours of the sirst sort are unknown and uncertain as being founded in dark and ignorant Ages whose Actions are now no less obscure than were then their Notions But the latter sort admit a more clear and more certain Knowledge Their several Steps Progresses and Gradations may without much difficulty be traced out and exposed to the view of all Mankind as hath been often done by the Divines of the Reformed Churches But the most eminent Instance of the latter kind is the Imposition of Celibacy in the Church of Rome which arose from an immoderate affection and reverence of Virginity in the Ancient Universal Church and Example of many particular Churches Upon which account I may boldly affirm that the Imposition of Celibacy hath greater advantages to recommend and justifie it to the World than any other erroneous Practice or Opinion of the Church of Rome whatsoever Many others indeed proceeded from the Imitation and Advancement of some Ancient Doctrine or Practice But then that Practice degenerated into Abuse and that Doctrine was advanced into Errour Whereas the Imposition of Celibacy can plead not only the Countenance and Resemblance of Antient Times but produce the Examples and Authorities of Popes Councils and Doctors who anciently imposed Celibacy upon the Clergy and urged the Imposition of it with no less fervour than it is at this day continued in the Church of Rome However Celibacy be confirmed by these Great Authorities and recommended by this peculiar advantage of Undoubted Antiquity few Divines of our Church have handled this Controversie or endeavoured to shew the inclusiveness of those Authorities and weakness of this Antiquity Some few have produced Authorities of the Antient Writers in Favour of the contrary Practice or in treating of other Arguments have briefly touched of it and all have passed it over in a few Words as a Matter of less Moment At least none that I know of have handled this Controversie in a particular Treatise nor shewn the Beginnings Occasions Advances and Success of the Imposition of Celibacy in the several Ages of the Church This Enquiry hath been omitted not because Truth is wanting to our Side or the whole Stream of Antiquity runs contrary to us but because this is one of the less Momentous Controversies and our Clergy whose peculiar Glory it is to be less solicitous of their Interest even in things lawful and indifferent declined the Controversie least in pleading for the lawfulness of Marriage and they should be thought by a Censorious World to plead for their own Passions and Inclinations and perhaps Practice too To supply this Defect is the Design of this Treatise to vindicate the injured Cause of Marriage and shew that the Antient Esteem of Celibacy was neither Rational nor Universal that both Antient and Modern Imposition of it is unlawful and that the Antient use of it is no reasonable nor necessary President of the Modern Practice of it to shew the Occasions of that Esteem and Beginnings of this Imposition and carry the History of the Celibacy and Marriage of the Clergy through the several Ages of the Church This I have here undertaken and as I hope in some measure performed perhaps with so much the better Success because induced by no Prejudices nor pleading for any peculiar Interests For the Reader may be assured that the Author of this Treatise hath neither experienced the Pleasures of Marriage nor hath the Honour to be a Priest of the Church of England It may not be amiss because our Adversaries commonly object to us falsifying of Citations and borrowing them from one another a Crime which the Romish Priests of England are truly guilty of perhaps therein to be excused because the badness of their Cause requireth the former and their own Ignorance necessitates the latter 〈◊〉 farther to advertise the Reader that of all the Citations which he shall find in this Treatise no one is taken up at the second hand for the first 1300. years and after that time no more than three Writers cited upon the Faith of others viz. Alvarus Pelagius Panormitan and Polydor Virgil whose Writings I had not then by me nor had any opportunity to consult A TREATISE OF THE CELIBACY OF THE CLERGY WHEREIN Its Rise and Progress are Historically Considered VIrginity is a thing so plausible and if true so venerable so countenanced by Antiquity and admir'd by the Unthinking Multitude so highly subservient to the Secular Interest and outward Grandeur of the Clergy That among all the Artifices wherewith the Church of Rome upholds a sinking and decaying Cause it is no wonder if She more especially make use of this It might justly deserve our reverence and excite our Emulation if her Clergy made good their glorious Pretences of Virginity by a real and unspotted Chastity But since when we departed from the Church of Rome we resumed that ancient priviledge of Mankind of believing our Senses since Reason and Revelation assures us that so great a part of Mankind cannot and Experience demonstrates that it doth not enjoy a Perfection so extraordinary since an enforced Vertue and servile Piety is neither acceptable to God nor venerable to Men We slight their Virginity because impos'd and do not believe it because we do not see it The Plea indeed of Antiquity is not only specious but in some measure true In the Ancient Church they retained an infinite esteem and veneration for Virginity Many extolled it as the glory and
are in no ways obliged to prove the Negative Marriage being not forbidden to the Clergy by the Moral Law and therefore to be esteemed Lawful to them till a manifest Prohibition shall be produced Bellarmine indeed urgeth that Precept of the Apostie Tit. 1. 8. that a Bishop be sober and temperate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But not to say that Bellarmine herein forsakes his own Principle and maketh Ceiibacy to be of Divine Institution since St. Paul speaketh this not only as one that had obtained Mercy of the Lord to be Faithful but also as an Apostle of Jesus Christ These words serve not the purpose as designing neither Continence nor Chastity but Abstinence from Drunkenness and Coveteousness and are opposed the first to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the second to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the former Verse Or if we should with St. Chrysostom interpret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in this place of an universal Temperance we must remember that such a Temperance is nothing else but a Moderation in the use of all lawful Pleasures 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Clemens Alex. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He is universally Temperate not who abstaineth from all things but who moderately useth those things which he judgeth lawful Or Lastly if we should against all reason interpret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chast and Continent Yet the Fathers unanimously teach that these Vertues are not incompatible with the moderate use of Marriage as we shall prove hereafter In the mean while let it be observed that St. Paul reason'd before Faelix 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Righteousness and Temperance and yet cannot be supposed to have forbidden him the embraces of his Wife As for Bellarmine's other Text 2 Tim. 2. 4. No man that warreth entangleth himself with the affairs of this life It is sufficient these words are addressed not only to Clergymen but to all Christians Whether a Married state doth necessarily entangle Persons in the Affairs of this Life more then Celibacy shall be enquired hereafter We come now to that great Store-house of the Assertors of Celibacy the VII Chap. of the 1 Epist. to the Corinthians And here a few Observations might have prevented many Mistakes as first That the Apostle was so far from imposing Virginity upon any Order of Men that he seemeth to have foreseen the danger of such Mistakes and therefore to have inserted these Cautions of them But I speak this by permission and not of command Ye are bought with a price be not ye the servants of men And this I speak for your own profit not that I may cast a snare upon you Secondly To those who are already Married he adviseth not a total but a temporary Abstinence Defraud not one the other except it be with consent for a time that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer and come together again that Sataâ—… tempt you not for your incontinency Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called Art thou bound unto a wife seek not to be loosed Thirdly That of those who are already Unmarried he adviseth Virginity to them only who have the Gift of Continence Nevertheless he that standeth stedfast in his own heart having no necessity but hath power over his own will and hath so decreed in his heart that he will keep his virgin he doth well I say therefore to the unmarried and widows it is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain let them marry for it is better to marry than to burn Fourthly That this advice of Virginity was given not for the attainment of any greater merit but meerly for reasons of Convenience and the urgent Necessities of those times I suppose therefore that this is good for the present distress Such shall have trouble in the flesh but I spare you But this I say brethren the time is short But I would have you without carefulness Fifthly That this Advice was directed not only to the Clergy but to all Christians in general The Apostle no where restrains his discourse to the former but all along addresseth himself to the whole multitude of Believers If any one of these Observations be true as they are all most certainly then no advantage can be drawn out of this Chapter for the cause of Celibacy now in Controversie But our Adversaries are not only destitute of Reason and Revelation in favour of this Opinion but we have also many strong Arguments against it For to pass by the greatest of all the Silence of Scripture and the contrary Practice of Antiquity the first manifested already the latter to be proved hereafter Many of the Greatest Divines of the Roman Church do expresly confess that the Celibacy of the Clergy is neither of Divine nor Apostolical Institution This all those Popes Councils and Doctors hereafter to be produced who allow the Marriage of Priests in the Greek Church to be lawful must have held unless they be supposed to have betrayed the Doctrine and Tradition of the Church All those Divines likewise who have admitted or allowed a total abrogation of the Laws of Celibacy could not believe it to have a Divine or Apostolical Original However I shall produce some few who expreslly denied it As first the Canon Law which may be looked upon as the sence of the whole Church of Rome for some Ages So then Gratian The Marriage of Priests is Forbidden neither by Legal nor Evangelical nor Apostolical Authority and yet is wholly Forbidden by the Ecclesiastical Law. And The Church after the Apostolical Institutions hath added some counsels of Perfection as that of the Continence of Ministers Joannes a Ludegna in a Speech made in the Council of Trent and Printed among the Acts of that Council determineth and largely proveth that the Celibacy of the Clergy is neither of Divine Right nor in any sence commanded by the Apostles but only advised by them And that if there was no Laws of the Church or Monastick Vows Priests or Monks might lawfully Marry Besides if the Opinion of those Divines be true who maintain that Christ superadded no Evangelical Counsels to the Moral Law Celibacy can be neither of Divine nor Apostolical Institution unless we suppose that the Apostles immediately adulterated that most pure and simple Religion which they had received from their Master And indeed this seemeth highly rational most consonant to the Honour of God and adapted to the Nature of Man. That Religion was most beâ—…itting the Wisdom of the Deity to prescribe for the last and most perfect Rule of Mankind which was most pure and simple And this seems to have been the great End of Christ's coming into the World to free us from the bondage of the Ceremonial Law and estate us in that perfect liberty if not of Will yet at least as to the objects of Choice in which we were at
more continent And in another place resolving Oceanus his Question Whether Carterius a Spanish Bishop who had married one Wife before and a second after Baptism had not thereby violated the Apostle's Injunction of a Bishop's being the Husband of one Wife He pronounceth That he had not Lastly The contrary Opinion is built upon a false Foundation For not to say that it was first set on foot by Tertullian after he was become a Montanist and from him received by the Latin Fathers it relyeth wholly upon these Two false Suppositions First That according to any other sence the Precept of the Apostle would have been unnecessary the Roman Laws never allowing Polygamy Secondly That the Apostle maketh use of the same Phrase when he commands a Widdow to be chosen the wife of one husband 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 although no Laws or civilized Nations ever permitted Women to have two Husbands at the same time But both these Reasons vanish when opposed to our Third Interpretation For Divorce was permitted by the Roman as well as Jewish Laws for many other causes besides that of Adultery which alone was allowed by Christ So that whosoever had put away his Wife for any other cause and married another might truly be said to have two Wives and any Woman who had married again after such an unlawful Divorce had truly two Husbands Having thus refuted the pretence of Divine or Apostolical Institution I proceed to the Second Proposition That the Celibacy of the Clergy hath nothing excellent in itself and produceth no real Advantage either to the Church or the Christian Religion beyond Marriage And here I am not ignorant what Panegyricks and Encomiums of Virginity have been composed by many of the Antients and almost all the Writers of the Barbarous Ages This was a large field for them wherein to display their Rhetorick a subject so specious in itself and glorious in its Title that 't is no wonder it hath been the Theme of so many luxuriant Wits many of which have little less than Deify'd it and equall'd its Merits to the collection of all other Christian Vertues I shall not here undertake nor is it necessary to make an harangue upon the Praises of Marriage much less to depress the Excellencies of the Virgin state it will suffice to shew the weakness and invalidity of the contrary Arguments and thereby reduce both Marriage and Virginity to that Equilibrium wherein Nature first placed them and our Saviour left them First then I observe That this extraordinary affection and reverence of Virginity was first started and introduced by a Heretick Tertullian who deceived by the Enthusiasms of Montanus endeavoured to resine the Christian Religion and advance it into a System of Angelick Perfection He led the way to the Writers of the Latin Church who receiving this prejudice from him propagated it in some measure among the Greeks although it never was by them embraced with that zeal and pursued with that fervour which always accompanied it in the Western Church Secondly it may be observed That this extravagant veneration of Virginity prevailed proportionably to the decay of Learning and encrease of Ignorance in all Ages The Reputation of Celibacy was ever then highest when Knowledge was at its lowest ebb Particularly in the Tenth and Eleventh Ages the most scandalous and barbarous periods of Time that ever the Church waded through when Learning seemed banished out of the whole World then Celibacy triumphed every where and was look'd upon as the Consummation of all Vertues Marriage of the Clergy decried and abolished and more Monasteries founded than in all the Ages either before or since Thirdly This Opinion was first produced and ever after advanced and maintained by a gross Mistake that there is somewhat of impurity or sinfulness in the use of Marriage and that Chastity cannot be retained in a Married state That the Admirers of Celibacy among the Antients were guilty of this Mistake we shall have hereafter occasion to observe and although the more Learned Writers of the Church of Rome are ashamed of such a Proposition yet do they constantly fall back and recurr to it when they assign the Reasons of imposing Celibacy upon the Clergy So Bellarmine after he had before disowned it when his purpose requires it doubts not to say It cannot be denied that some impurity and pollution intervenes in the act of Marriage not what is a sin but what ariseth from sin If by this Pollution and Impurity he means a Natural one we grant it but then that affects not the Soul nor depreciates the worth of Marriage if a Moral one that will indeed be truly and properly a Sin but this he dares not say Besides his Distinction of a Sin and a Consequence of a Sin is wholly vain For if in all Use of Marriage the effect of a Sin interveneth then cannot Marriage be used without some precedent sin A Proposition so false and erroneous that the Use of Marriage was intended for our first Parents in the state of Innocence and would have been practis'd to this very day had they never fallen Nay farther whether fallen or not fallen it was their Duty to make use of Marriage for the Propagation of Mankind and even for some Ages after the Creation it was so far from being meritorious that it was Unlawful to continue Virgins But if by the antecedent sin which produceth this Pollution in the Act of Marriage Bellarmine means only the Original depravity of our Nature if it be a Necessary effect of this depravity then God cannot in Justice and will not in Mercy impute it to us if it be not a Necessary effect of it then Marriage may be used without it and his Proposition will fall to the ground However because this ever was and is still the great Engine of the Patrons of Virginity wherewith they gained Applause in the World and blinded the eyes of unwary People it will not be amiss to clear this matter a little further and demonstrate that a true and proper Chastity and Continence may be observed in Marriage which will also overthrow most of the Authorities produced out of the Writings of the more moderate and disinteressed Fathers as insinuating no more than an Advice of Chastity in the Use of Marriage If this Proposition seemeth either harsh or like a Paradox it is only because we are unacquainted with it and our judgment anticipated by false notions of Chastity which consists as well in a moderate and well regulated Use of Matrimonial Acts as in a total Abstinence from them nay the former will always be a Vertue the latter sometimes a Sin as in the Infancy of the Creation and if one married Person totally abstaineth without the consent of the other and in most cases but a thing indifferent and then only a Vertue when it administers occasion and opportunity to a greater good than is the Propagation of Mankind and vertuous Education of Children for
the future Service of God. Such Cases did often happen in the Beginning of Christianity and the Times of Persecution but in the calm and flourishing estate of the Church are more rarely to be found So that in all others Chastity in the notion of a total Abstinence is a thing wholly indifferent even although such Abstinence should be true and perfect But alas the far greater part of Mankind are not capable of such an Abstinence which consisteth not only in the preserving the Body from actual Pollution and unlawful Pleasures for that may be a matter of Necessity as well as Choice and is common to thousands who shall never see the Glories of Heaven but also in refraining the Mind from the desires and even the thoughts of Uncleanness and preventing the circles of an inward Fire Such a Man may truly be said to retain a pure and unspotted Virginity but then I doubt that at the same time he will be the Phoenix of his Age. And then after all if he want either Abilities or a Will to employ himself in Vertue and the Service of God to greater advantage than he could have done in a Married state his Celibacy will be devoid of all merit and become wholly indifferent On the other side the conservation of a true Chastity is both possible and easie in Marriage if it be not frequent that ariseth from the corruption of Mankind not any desicience or imperfection of Marriage Now that Chastity and Continence may be here found and practised the Apostle assureth us when he saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Marriage is honourable in all men and the bed uudefiled or impolluted directly contrary to Bellarmine's Proposition The Apostle is herein followed by almost all the Fathers I shall producce some of them and first the Great Paphnutius who when in the Council of Nice the Celibacy of the Clergy was proposed under the pretence of advancing Chastity pronounced the embraces of a lawful Wife to be Chastity and was therein applauded by the whole Council So Clemens Alex. Just Men under the Old Law begat Children Marrying or using Marriage incontinently What may we not use Marriage continently and not go about to dissolve that which God hath joyned He also who marrieth for the sake of Procreation of Children ought to use continence so as not to lust even after his own Wife whom he ought to love begetting Children with an honest and chaste will. Lactantius As the Woman is bound by the Laws of Chastity to lust after no other Object so is the Husband bound by the same Law because God hath joyned the Husband to his Wife by the union of one Body St. Ambrose Virginity hath its rewards Widdowhood its merits there is also place for conjugal Chastity The Apostle commands a Bishop to be the Husband of one Wife not that he excludeth an unmarried Man for that is not the sence of his Precept but that by conjugal Chastity he may preserve the grace given him in Baptism If then Chastity is common both to Marriage and Celibacy the latter can have no intrinsick Excellence beyond the former Nor indeed do our more judicious Adversaries pretend to that Few are guilty of so foul an errour except some zealous and unlearned Monks The Excellence therefore of it is wholly accidental and consists only in affording greater advantages of Piety Knowledge and Beneficence than Marriage This therefore is next to be examined Let us then consider any one as a Man a Christian and a Priest. If in the first quality as a Member and Citizen of Mankind that estate will deserve the preheminence which is most communicative of good and beneficial to the whole Universe The benefits of Celibacy are indirect accidental and rare those of Marriage direct natural and frequent If as a Christian that state will be most eligible that more immediately procureth the grace and favour of God this Celibacy directly affords to none Marriage conferrs on all in the Opinion of the Church of Rome who make it a Sacrament If as a Priest that state is preferrable which giveth the greater and more diffusive Example to the Laity A Vertuous Celibacy will be indeed Exemplary to Virgin Laicks the smallest and most inconsiderable part of the Church But then a prudent and religious conduct of Marriage will serve as a Rule for other married Persons the far greater part of the Laick Church Thus far the Merits of both are at least equal If we recurr to the Authority of Examples we may begin at Paradice and the first state of Mankind Here we sind a married Couple even in the state of Innocence and the very first Blessing given by God unto Mankind to be this Be fruitful and multiply And as it can be no laudable Ambition to desire to exceed the Piety and Innocence of Paradice so neither can it be any great Perfection to defeat the first Blessing of the Creation If we descend hence until the Times of Moses we shall find all the Patriarchs both before and after the Flood to have pleased God and served their Generations at the same time All this while Celibacy hath no Example nor any one President If we look into the Mosaick Law Marriage was there expresly permitted and indirectly commanded to the Priest since none but their own Posterity could be admitted into that Order I am not ignorant that the Patrons of Celibacy urge mightily the Three days Abstinence from their Wives imposed upon the People in preparing themselves to receive the Law of God in Mount Sinai But this was enjoyned not only to the Priests but to all the People was a short and temporary not a total and perpetual Abstinence served only to typifie that inseparable Purity of Mind and Body which was to flourish in the Church of Christ and was a meer Rite and Ceremony unworthy of the dignity and simplicity of the Christian Religion Again if we consider the Saints and Prophets of the Old Testament St. Chrysostom will tell us that all the Prophets had Wives and FaFamilies as Esaias Ezekiel and the Great Moses and yet sufferd therby no diminution of their Vertue Or if we take our measures from the venerable Examples of Christ and his Apostles we may learn both from their Doctrine and Practice that the Perfection of a Christian state consists not in an idle and contemplative but in an active and benefactive state That most if not all the Apostles were Married we shall prove hereafter and if our Saviour chose a Single state wherein to pass his life on Earth Clemens Alex. shall answer for us That He had his proper Spouse the Church that He was no ordinary Man who should either want an help or be subject to the temptations of Incontinency that it was not necessary for him to continue his Species by Procreation who was himself God blessed for evermore And then if we cast our eyes upon the
Worship and Opinion of the Gentiles we shall find Celibacy in no great esteem among them and Marriage not only allowed to their Priest but even made necessary to some of them insomuch as the Pontifex Maximus among the Romans could continue no longer in his Office than his Wife liv'd St. Herom indeed and after him all the Champions of Celibacy alledge the Exmple of the Hierophantae of Athons But had that good Father in the heat of his Disputation considered the Character of those Priests he would not have ventured to produce their Example For if we may believe the Relations of Lucian and the more Ancient Christian Writers those Hierophantae of Greece practised in their secret Rites and Mysteries the most abominable Lusts and Villanies of the Pagan Superftition In speaking of this matter I will further observe that there was but one great Order of Priests among the Heathens which professed Virginity those of Cybele or Isis for as for the Vestal Virgins they were permitted to marry when their time of Service was expired and but one Sect of Philosophers that decried and contemned Marriage the Epicureans and of these the first were the most Infamous and Incontinent of all Priests the latter the most Debauched and Voluptuous of all Philosophers Lastly If we consult Reason for Scripture we have before examieed and Tradition we shall hereafter neither will that declare in favour of Celibacy That will only teach us that state is more Noble which most advanceth the Happiness of Life and gives the greatest assistance to the Perfection of our Nature For neither Marriage nor Celibacy have of themselves any intrinsick Merit at least not Celibacy as we before proved Neither of them doth immediately and directly illuminate the Understanding refine the Reason or purge the Will. Now the Happiness of Human Life and the Perfection of Nature consists in the tranquility and imperturbation of the Mind whereby it is sitted for the Contemplation of her Creator and the Exercise of all more noble and sublime Vertues This Tranquility next to Habits of Vice in the Soul is chiefly interrupted by immoderate and ungoverned Passions in the Body although even those Habits were produced at first by the intemperance of these Passions The greatest and most vehement of our Passions are those of Desire and among them the propensity to the continuation of our Species obtains thefirst place A a right Use of Marriage satisfies this propensity allays its violence secureth the Mind from all tempests on that side This Celibacy can do only in those who have the Gift of Continence who perhaps are not the thousandth part of Mankind if those be excepted to whom not God or Vertue but some defect of Nature hath given a reprieve from this Passion In the rest Celibacy especially when enforced will be only the occasion of perpetual or at least intermitting tempests which instead of a sweet Serenity will introduce into the Mind a turbulent Commotion dissorder all her Thoughts and deprive her of all Happiness Or if we should grant which is most false that Celibacy well governed is in all able to give the Mind the same tranquility and secure her from all perturbations arising from the passion of Desire yet still the Merits and Advantages of Marriage and Celibacy will be equal even in this Consideration There remains then only arguments of temporal convenience and outward decorum of the Church And here though it might suffice to observe that arguments of convenience are of no validity against a probability of unlawfulness much less against an express Divine Permission yet shall I briefly examine the Reasons of this kind produced by our Adversaries They may be reduced to three Heads A greater immunity from secular cares and worldly business and thereby a better opporunity to attend the Service of God and execute the Duties of their Office Secondly A certain indecency in the use of Marriage which renders it incompatible or at least inconvenient to the Sacerdotal Office Thirdly The better administration of the goods and revenues of the Church As for the First that might indeed with some colour have been pleaded in the infancy of the Gospel when many of the Clergy were designed as itinerant Preachers for the propagation of the Faith although it was then so far from being necessary that many of the Apostles did in their travels lead about with them if not their wives which is most probable yet at least women But now when the Faith is planted and the Clergy have particular limits assigned them wherein to execute their Office that reason ceaseth Another case may happen wherein this argument may take place in times of Persecution when 't is of great advantage and interest to the Church that her Clergy give examples of patience and constancy to their flock and is very probable that a man will embrace Martyrdom with a greater resolution and unconcernedness when freed from the solicitude of Wife and Children whose consideration and perhaps importunities might tempt him to Prevarication but then Celibacy is here also so far from being necessary that it will augment the Merits and the Glory of Martyrdom to break through those Obstacles and slight those Considerations However certain it is that in the Peaceable and Flourishing Times of the Church this Reason is of no Validity Hence appeareth with how little Reason our Adversaries urge that so much celebrated Text of St. Paul He that is Unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord how he may please the Lord. An admonition by the Apostle adapted to those times of Persecution as appears by the Preface of it But I would have you speaking to all Christians without Carefulness For otherwise Marriage does not necessarily involve more Carefulness or Disquiet than Celebacy If a greater Anxiety doth ordinarily attend it that proceeds not from the nature of Marriage but the abuse of Men. And therefore Clemen Alex. answers to the Ancient Hereticks urging this very Text against Marriage What then Cannot those who please their Wives in a lawful way give thanks to God May not a Married Man together with his Marriage care for the things that belong to the Lord Further these Texts do no more prove the Necessity or Convenience of Priests Celibacy than it doth of all other Christians Nor can it be here pretended that the Clergy are more peculiarly devoted to the Service of God and therefore more particularly obliged to this Duty For first That would suppose some Excellency in Celibacy which we have proved cannot be found and then the Priests under the Old Law were no less solemnly Dedicated to God who yet were not debarred Marriage Besides the Church of Rome excludes not those from holy Orders who have either Buried their Wives or vow a perpetual Abstinence from them although they may have many Children then alive As if an equal Solicitude and Anxiety were not required to provide for Children begotten before as after
Ordination Not to say that the Ancient Hereticks made use of the same Plea and shunned Marriage to avoid the trouble of providing Necessaries for a Family and that the Apostle was not ignorant of this inconvenience if it be any and yet thought it not sufficient to enjoyn Celibacy to the Clergy But in truth it is a meer Chimaera a Figment and a vain Suspicion For to use St. Chrysostom's words Marriage doth not only not hinder the Practice of Divine Philosophy if we will be sober but also administers to us great Assistance in it by culming the turbulencies of Nature and not permitting it to be tossed in tempests but preparing it a haven wherein to ride securely Wherefore God hath herein granted a Priviledge to Mankind Again if a Priest or Bishop must therefore be Unmarried that he may decline the Cares and Troubles of the World then certainly with much more reason he ought not to intermeddle in Secular Business and the Government of whole Provinces For who can imagine that the government of a single Family involves more care and trouble than the administration of St. Peter's Patrimony Lastly I appeal to the Experience of the whole World Whether the Regulars of the Church of Rome who to their Vow of Continence have added another of Retirement from the World do not busie themselves in Secular Matters exercise Merchandise and heap up Riches beyond the Clergy of the Church of England The Second Reason alledged by our Adversaries is a certain indecency and impurity in the act of Marriage which renders it unfitting for a Preist to proceed from the late embraces of his wife to the administration of holy things So that because the Clergy of the Christian Church do either daily administer the Sacraments and offer up Scrifices of praise and thansgiving to God in the name of all the people or at least ought to be alwaies ready and prepar'd to do it They ought therefore perpetually to abstain from conjugal Duties This was ever the chief Argument and Foundation of Celibacy Popes and Councils in enjoyning it to the Clergy seldom make use of any other than this and all the enemies of Preists Marriage from the times of Origen to this day have certainly plac'd it in the front of their Arguments Yet after all it is a shameful and most foolish Sophism For if by this indecency and impurity in the use of Marriage they mean a moral one that is absolutely false and flat Heresie The very opinion of the Marcionites Encratites and other more absurd Hereticks But if they mean only a natural impurity that in no ways renders any man less sit for the Service of God nor ought to exclude him from the administration of holy things any more than the other more frequent evacuations of Nature So gross a conceit is unworthy the simplicity of the Christian Religion and makes it degenerate into the dregs of Judaism Besides if we should suppose a natural impurity somewhat indecent in the Clergy which yet is foolish to imagine of a secret and hidden impurity such as this is yet will it be infinitely outweighed by the inevitable danger of a moral tupitude to which Preists are expos'd by enforc'd Celibacy Lastly this Argument of the daily celebration of Mass and consecrating of the Eucharist affects not Deacons nor Subdeacons and is entirely overthrown by the practice of the Church in the Apostolick and Primitive times when all Baptized Christians daily receiv'd the Eucharist and yet cannot be suppo'sd either to have been enjoyn'd or have used perpetual abstinence from their wives The Third Reason is the better Oeconomy of the goods and revenues of the Church which our Adversaries would not have expended upon wife and children but in publick acts of charity This might indeed with some pretence be urg'd if all the unmarried Clergy employed the superfluity of their Revenues upon Piety and Charity or none of the married Clergy did it or if the well ordering of Families and good Education and decent provision for children were not of advantage to the Publick But these are equally false And then in vain are wives and children removed when nephews and other relations can gain access The examples of the Court of Rome especially for the last two hundred years demonstrates that Popes have employed themselves with greater zeal and fervour to the aggrandizing of their Families than ever the married Clergy of the Reformed Churches did to the enriching of their Posterity Thus have we examined the pretended advantages of the Clergies Celibacy and found them to be null and vain But suppose them valid and really as great as they are represented to us by our Adversaries If after all it hath in other respects no less disadvantages Celibacy will yet remain indifferent both in its nature and convenience To pass by therefore the inconvenience of Celibacy in general as that it ordinarily produceth Morosness Pride and Uncharitableness to say nothing worse when affected and chosen as a matter of Merit as Clemens Alex. of old observed I shall consider only the particular inconveniences arising from the enforced Celibacy of the Clergy and mention but Two of them but those so great and sensible that each of them infinitely outweigheth all the pretended advantages of it The First is the inevitable and most certain danger of open Incontinence in many of the Clergy and thereby introducing a horrible Scandal into the Church of Christ which may alone more effectually obstruct Piety and Vertue among the Laity than the Preaching of all together can promote it For all ignorant Christians which are the far greater part of the Church are led more by Examples than Reason and assent to the Christian Religion meerly for the authority of their Pastors that Propose it So that the Scandal caused by the Lust of one Incontinent Priest is more dangerous to the Church than the Celibacy of an hundred Chaste Priests can be advantageous to it Now that forced Celibacy betrays the Clergy to open Incontinency let St. Bernard speak Take from the Church honourable Marriage and the Bed undefiled Do you not fill it with Fornicators incestuous Persons Abusers of themselves Sodomites and all kind of uncleanness This Experience hath also sadly demonstrated as we may hereafter shew The Second inconvenience of forced Celibacy is that it deprives the Church of the service of many Pious and Learned Men who either being already married will not consent to separate themselves from ther Wives or being yet single will not receive Orders upon the terms of Celibacy as either finding that they have not the Gift of Continency or doubting whether they shall always have it The lamentable Effects of this Truth in England and Germany in the Eleventh and Twelfth Ages we shall afterwards have occasion to mention Lastly Suppose that Celibacy had all the aforementioned Advantages and none of the Inconveniences yet still if Marriage hath peculiar advantages which Celibacy wants both
will remain indifferent and neither to be preferred That Marriage hath such cannot be denied For not to say that Marriage in the Opinion of the Church of Rome actually confers Grace and was chosen by Christ to be a Type of his Mystical Union with the Church not to urge the precedent Arguments nor produce a-new the Authority of St. Chysostom not to say that the vertuous Marriage of a Priest may be highly exemplary to his People since the Effects of it are visible and manifest in the prudent Government of his Family and the pious Education of his Children whereas Continence which is the Perfection of Celibacy is a Vertue of the Soul invisible and hidden from the Eyes of Men and so cannot be properly Exemplary To pass by all this I will I will alledge only the Authority of Clemes Alex. in these words Marriage as well as Celibacy hath its peculiar offices and duties pleasing to God God I mean the care of Children and Wife Whence the Apostle commandeth those to be chosen Bishops who from the vertuous government of their own Families have learned to preside over the Church well And in truth a Man approveth not himself in chusing a single Life but he transcends the ordinary rank of Men who useth Marriage and the procreation of Cildren and the government of a Family without immoderate affection or anxiety and notwithstanding the care of his House is unalterable from the love of God and bravely resists all the temptations of Wife and Children Servants and Possessions Having thus proved that the Celibacy of the Clergy was neither instituted by Christ nor his Apostles and hath no excellence in it self or convenience to the Church I proceed to the Third Proposition That the Imposition of it upon any Order of men is unjust and repugnant to the Law of God. And here because the possibility of Continence in all will intervene as the main Question I will divide my Discourse and prove I. That the Church hath no Authority to Inhibit Marriage to the Clergy even supposing that all can contain II. That all cannot contain and consequently that to impose Celibacy upon any Order of men made up of all Ages Constitutions and Humours is directly contrary to Reason Justice and the Law of God. I. First then the Church hath no Authority to forbid Marriage to the Clergy even supposing that all men may by due diligence obtain the gift of Continence This may be evidently deduc'd from what was last proved For the Church cannot challenge a greater Authority than the Apostles had But their Authority as we are assured by St. Paul was given them only for Edification and not for Destruction Not that the Imposition of Celibacy tends not to the edification of the Church we have already proved that it naturally tends to the destruction of many members of the Church is manifest For in so numerous a Body as the Clergy is 't is morally impossible that many of them should not neglect those means whereby the gift of Continence may be acquired and thereby falling into Inconinency lose their own Souls and by their Scandal and Example draw many into Perdition with them Whereas had Marriage been permitted them both would in all probability have been prevented Indeed if the edification arising from the imposition or prohibition of any thing indifferent be obvious and evident and the destruction either none or dubious and uncertain or even if the edification be uncertain so as there be not the least danger of destruction or perhaps even although both edification and destruction were equally dubious the decrees of the Church in all these cases ought to take place For otherwise a door would be left open for the obstinate contradiction of foolish and unreasonable men But in this case the edification produced by the Celibacy of the Clergy is as we have proved none or at least infinitely dubious Whereas the danger of destruction which may be caused by it is most certain manifest and apparent Secondly The Church cannot totally deprive any man of the liberty of enjoying any lawful and natural pleasures nor take from him any of those comforts and benefits which nature and the right of creation first gave him and intended for him She may restrain and limit the use of them as to time and place but can by no means totally abollish it So the Church may forbid flesh to be eaten or Marriage to be contracted at some certain seasons of the year but as she cannot enjoyn to any man a perpetual abstinence from flesh so neither can she totally forbid Marriage to any order of men For this is contrary to the very genius and constitution of the Christian Religion whose peculiar glory is the simplicity of it and the entire conformity in all the Agenda of it to the law of nature Thirdly Whatsoever may be pretended for inhibiting Marriage to the unmarried Clergy the Church most certainly cannot dissolve the Marriage of those who never made any vow of of continence and were lawfully married before the prohibition of the Church Since our Saviour expresly saith What God hath joyned together let no man put asunder Yet the Church of Rome did this in the Eleventh and Twelfth Ages when many Popes and Councils commanded the married Clergy to be separated from their wives upon pain of Excommunication not permitting them to retain their wives by relinquishing their Offices and retiring into Lay Communion Although the Clergy in their Remonstrance offered to Nicolas II. protested that they had never made any vow of Continence and could not contain without the use of Marriage I know it is pretended that the Clergy in receiving Orders are supposed to have made a Tacite and Interpretative Vow of Chastity But the vanity of that pretence I shall manifest immediately Other Reasons might be produced but these are sufficient II. All Men cannot contain and therefore to impose Celibacy upon any Order of Men is injust and contrary to the Divine Law. For all Persons who cannot contain have a right to Marry by the Law of Nature that they may not be necessitated to Sin and are commanded to Marry by the Law of God. But if they cannot contain let them Marry For it is better to Marry than to Burn. In imposing Celibacy therefore upon the Clergy the Church of Rome forbids many to Marry whom God commands to do it Now that all Men cannot contain appears from this very place of the Apostle which Insinuates that in some Persons there is no Medium between Marriage and Burning but it is evident beyond all contradiction from the Reason of this Permission of Marriage assigned in the precedent Verse For I would that all Men were even as myself that is Continent But every Man hath his proper Gift of God one after this manner and another after that Our Saviour expresly Teacheth the same thing when to the Apostles objecting That if the the Case were
it or Marriage would obstruct it Secondly If it should be lawful for the Soul voluntarily to exercise this Arbitrary Power upon the Body yet most certainly it is unlawful for the Church to impose any thing which will induce a necessity of offering violence to Nature weakning the energy of the Soul heaping diseases upon the Body and dissolving the harmony of Both. Thirdly All are not able to undergo these Austerities and when undergon they are not always sufficient to prevent Incontinency The frequent repetition of them demonstrates this which would be useless and foolish if the disease did not as often recurr Not Watchings or Fastings not Whippings or even Emasculation itself practised of old by Origen aâ—…d the Valesian Hereticks and in the last Age by Ambrosius Morales can wholly eradicate in some this peccant humour It must needs have been a very violent passion the indignation of which could extort so severe a remedy which when it was used did effectually indeed preserve the Body but not in the least diminish the Lust of Mind Yet it is the Mind which either sanctifies or pollutes the Body For what doth it profit to have the Body clean and the Soul polluted whenas the Body is either saved or damned by the merits of the Soul. As for all other severities how ineffectual they are in some Constitutions Palladius relates a memorable Story of Moses a most Famous Abbot in the Desarts of Egypt afterwards made Bishop of the Arabians whom Palladius calls the Blessed Theodoret the Divine Moses who from his Youth perpetually vexed with temptations of Incontinency could not free himself from them by all the austerities which Wit could invent or Nature endure and therefore all his life was forced to abstain from receiving the Sacrament till in his Old Age he was by an extraordinary Miracle delivered from them Upon which Palladius makes this Remark For in truth Concupiscence is perfectly untameable But the great Plea of the Writers of the Church of Rome remains behind which must be more largely discussed They pretend that the Church imposeth Celibacy or a Necessity of Continence upon no Man That she hath annexed it indeed to the four Superior Orders of the Clergy but then forceth none to enter into those Orders That the Unlawfulness of the Clergies Marriage is not so much founded in the Prohibition of the Church or Incompatibility of Marriage with Holy Orders as in the Vow of Continence which all either do make or are supposed to make when they receive those Orders To this I shall Oppose and in order Prove these Three Propositions I. This Plea cannot justly be used by the Church of Rome nor will excuse her Practice II. A Vow of Continence obligeth not in case of insuperable Incontinence and then may not only lawfully but must necessarily be violated III. Whether lawfully or unlawfully necessarily or unnecessarily violated if Marriage be Contracted after a Vow of Continence it is firm and valid and cannot be rescinded I. For the First That this Plea neither belongs to nor availeth the Church of Rome it appeareth many ways As First Although it should be granted the Church of Rome directly imposeth Celibacy upon none yet it cannot be denied that she forbiddeth all who have once made a Vow of Continence ever after to violate it although in case of Incontinence when the impossibility of observing it any longer without actual sin maks the violation of it become necessary and commanded by the Law of God. Secondly She hath actually and often imposed Continence upon those who never vowed it as when she first enjoyned Celibacy to the Clergy and renewed that Injunction when become obsolete Nor can she at this day be excused from the same Imposition since a numerous society of Clergymen are necessary to the being and continuance of the Church and she hath enjoyned Celibacy to all who will be Members of this Society although it be uncertain whether there be so many continent Persons in the Church as are necessarily required to execute the Ministery of it much more whether among all continent Christians there be so many both worthy and willing to receive Orders as may serve the necessities of the Church Thirdly Whether the Church commands any to make a Vow of Continence or forbids them to violate it when made Both equally defeat all the great Advantages and glorious Merits which are pretended to be in Celibacy For nothing can be either acceptable or meritorious which is not purely voluntary neither commanded nor punished by any human Laws Otherwise it can never appear whether the Action proceeds from the Dictates of the Will or rather from the Awe of that Command and the Fear of that Punishment And therefore St. Hierom introduceth Christ thus speaking Those Eunuchs please me which Will not Necessity hath emasculated Whereas in the Church of Rome none can be admitted into the Four Great Orders nor yet in the Three Lesser Orders enjoy any Ecclesiastical Benifices or Privileges of Clergy-men unless they Vow perpetual Continence Nor is it permitted to the former ever to violate their Vow by Contracting of Marriage although they should resign their Preferments and depart from the Execution of their Office. Fourthly which is chiefly to be respected It can never appear that any Vow is truly made by those who are ordained if the Church commandeth all such to make that Vow For a Vow is the peculiar voluntary and free act of him that Voweth as being a Promise made to God and consisteth in the internal Action of the Soul which necessarily supposeth an Intention of Vowing So that if any Person pronouncing the Form of the Vow should either not mind what he saith or at the same time resolve the contrary of what he saith the first is guilty of Negligence the second of a Lye but neither can truly be said to have Vowed and therefore if they afterwards Marry do violate no Vow This Scotus Durandus Dorbellus Paludanus and other Divines of the Church of Rome do expresly teach and for this very reason maintain that Marriage is unlawful to the Clergy not upon the account of any Vow annexed to their Orders but meerly for the authority of the Church's Prohibition As for a tacit and interpretative Vow which many recurr to supposing a Vow of Continence to be inseparably annexed to Orders so that these cannot be received but that at the same time a Vow must be supposed to have been made that is wholly vain This refuge was invented as well to avoid the Reason last mentioned as to solve an Objection drawn from the Practice of the Church of Rome which even for the last Six Hundred years have not always required an explicit Vow nor doth at this day although many Popes have enjoyned it to be openly and expresly made but their Decrees meeting with great Opposition they were forced to let them fall and recurr to this Expedient of an Interpretative Vow This
the Clergy of the Church of Rome Now at this time in the Church of Ephesus some young Widdows had imprudently been chosen into the number of Deaconesses who either not being able or not willing to contain had some of them Married and others as the Apostle seems to imply had given Scandal by their loose carriage The Apostle therefore ratifies the Marriages of those who were already Married and giveth free leave to the rest to Marry But for the future commands that none be admitted into that Order under Threescore years old at which age there is no danger of Incontinency Now that the Apostle treateth here of these Deaconesses or Widdows who had promised to the Church to observe Continence appeareth as well from the Context as from the common Interpretation of the Fathers many of whom Bellarmine reckons up and embraceth their Opinion After the Apostle succeed the Fathers St. Clemens Alex. the great Defender of Marriage and most Learned of all the Writers of the Three first Centuries Second Marriage after a Promise of Continence is unlawful not in the Contract but in the breach of Promise St. Cyprian speaking of Virgins that had professed Chastity But if they will not or cannot persevere it is better they should Marry than fall into Incontinency by their faults Epiphanius although otherwise a great Bigot of Virginity speaking of those who after a Solemn Vow of Continence and undertaking a Monastick Life find themselves tempted with Lusts gives them this advice It is better to commit one sin by violating the Vow than many by indulging a wandring Lust it is best for him who cannot perform his undertaking openly to Marry a Wife according to the Law. St. Basil blaming some Virgins who after they had solemnly devoted themselves to God and vowed perpetual Chastity behaved themselves unseemly saith It were much better for them being married to a Husband to receive from him directions of life and recompence the benefits of his government by assisting him in the care of the Family and educating a succession of hopeful Children and so preserve her Chastity although it were only to avoid the Jealousie of her Husband There is extant among St. Chrysostom's Works two Eloquent and Passionate Treatises written by him whilst young to his Friend Theodorus afterwards the Great and Learned Bishop of Mopsuestia who in his youth having entred into a Monastick Life had in the twentieth year of his age quitted it for the love of Hermione a fair Virgin whom he resolved to Marry Here Chrysostome employeth all the strength of his Rhetorick to exaggerate the heinousness of his Sin committed in violating his Vow made to God yet no where adventures to declare that his Marriage would be invalid gives it the name of Marriage and not of Adultery and although he equals the Sin of it to that Crime and by a Metaphor calls it Adultery yet he plainly distinguisheth it from formal Adultery more especially in these words Marriage you will say is lawful so say I Marriage is honourable saith the Apostle and the bed undefiled but fortnicators and adulerers God will judge But it is not permitted to you to celebrate the Rites or rather use the lawfulness of Marriage For when one is joyned to a heavenly Spouse to part with him for a Wife and joyn himself to her this is Adultery although you should ten thousand times call it Marriage and by so much worse than Adultery by how much God is greater than Men. Wonder not if Marriage is condemned equally with Adultery when God is despised Here the Crime indeed is sufficiently aggravavated but placed wholly as may be observed not in the use of his intended Marriage but in violating his first Faith pledged to Christ in his Vow of Continence Calls his intended Contract Marriage grants that when Married Hermione will be his Wife And in the close of his Passage plainly distinguisheth his Crime from Adultery Wherefore the Latine Translation in Fronto Ducaeus his Edition renders it thus Wonder not if such a Marriage is compared to Adultery The same Father in another place saying That some Monks in his time quitting their Profession Contracted Marriage passeth the same Censure on them always proceeding upon this ground That they who make a Vow of Chastity do thereby as it were joyn themselves in Marriage to Christ and therefore by a subsequent Marriage become as it were guilty of Adultery Upon which account also many other Fathers in their Rhetorical Flights give to these Marriages the Title of Adultery But if we come to close and strict Reasoning St. Augustine will tell us for them That as this Marriage with Christ is not True but only Spiritual so neither is this Adultery True and Real but only Spiritual and Mystical This Father professedly handles this Question refutes all the contrary Objections and having said that Such Persons are condemned not because they afterwards Contracted a Marriage but because they violated their former Promise of Chastity Determines in these words No small an evil ariseth from this inconsiderate Opinion of the invalidity of Marriage of holy Virgins which quit their Profession For hereby Wives are separated frrom their Husbands as if they were Adulteresses not Wives and they who would by separating of them reduce them to Continence make their Husbands become true Adulterers if while these are alive they marry other Wives Wherefore Gratian contracteth the sence of St. Augustine's Argument and truly represents it thus Some affirm those who Marry after a Vow to be Adulterers but I say they grievously sin who Separate such Persons I might produce many other places of St. Augustine to the same purpose especially where spâ—…aking of Professed Virgins which although Incontinent adventured not to Marry partly for Shame and partly for fear of Punishment He giveth his Opinion thus These who long to Marry and yet do not Marry because they cannot do it unpunished it is better they should Marry than Burn that is than be scorched with the secret flames of Lust who repent their Profession and are grieved at their Promise St. Hierome writing to a Consecrated Virgin who leaving her Mother lived with an unmarried Clergyman and was suspected to maintain an unlawful familiarity with him giveth her this advice either to return to her Mother or Marry her Lover Why are you afraid to return to her If you be still a Virgin why need you fear a close Consinement If Debauched why do you not publickly Marry That will be the next refuge after Shipwrack to extenuate at least your Crime by this Remedy A Passage so much the more Memorable because of this Couple the one was a Clergyman the other a Nun and yet St. Hirome not only alloweth but adviseth their Marriage The Council of Ancyra in the Year 314. Decreed that Those who having vowed Virginity falsifyed their Promise should be placed in the rank of Bigamists But none
will say that Bigamy is unlawful much less that it is Adultery I might mention many other Councils which inflicted only a Temporary Penance on those Marriages Pope Leo I. Decreed that a Monk who forsaking the profession of Continence either became a Soldier or Married should expiate his Fault by Publick Penance because although Warfare may be Innocent and Marriage honest yet it is a Crime to forsake the better Choice Pelagius the Heretick who in the matter of Vows and Marriage was as Orthodox as any in his Epistle to Demetrias the Virgin falsly ascribed both to St. Hierome and St. Augustine saith Let the Consecrated Virgins either Marry if they cannot contain or contain if they will not Marry Pope Gelasius in the end of the Fifth Century defineth thus If any Widows shall through Inconstancy violate their profession of Chastity willingly undertook it concerns them to take care with what satisfaction they may appease God. For as if they could not perhaps contain they were not at all forbidben to Marry so when they have once deliberately promised Chastity to God they ought to have kept it yet ought not we to lay a Snare or impose a Necessity upon any such But proposing to them the merits of Continence and danger of breaking of a Vow leave the matter to their own Conscience In the Seventh Age Theodorus Archbishop of Canterbury in his Penitential which was the Canon Law of the Church of England for some Ages ordered that If any Man having a simple Vow of Virginity married a Wife he should not put away his Wife but only do Penance In which words lest Bellarmine's distinction of a Simple and Solemn Vow should be thought to take place it may be observed that Naldus in his Annotations upon Gratian confesseth the word Simplex is wanting in all the Manuscript Copies In the end of the Eleventh Age even after the Decrees of Hildebrand were published Ivo Bishop of Chartres the greatest Canonist of his Age relates how a Canon of the Church of Paris Contracted Marriage and maintains that that Marriage neither can nor ought to be dissolved In the next Age Gratian the Compiler of the Canon Law consirmed by Eugenius III. and at this day in use in the Church of Rome is express for the validity of these Marriages If a Deacon saith he will lay down his Office he may lawfully use Marriage when once Contracted For although he made a Vow of Chastity at his Ordination yet so great is the force of the Sacrament of Marriage that not even by the violation of the Vow can the Marriage be dissolved In the Thirteenth Age Innocent III. and the whole Lateran Conncil acknowledged the Marriage of Priests in some Western Provinces to be firm and valid and the Use of it to be lawful In the Fifteenth Age AEneas Sylvius afterwards Pope by the Name of Pius II. and the most Learned of all that have sat in St. Peter's Chair for these last Thousand years being when Cardinal of Siena desired by a Priest of his Acquaintance who found he could no longer contain to obtain for him a Dispensation from the Pope to Marry returned him Answer That the Pope refused it and at the same aime gave him this advice I acknowledge you do not act imprudently if when you cannot contain you seek to Marry although that ought to have been considered before you entred into Holy Orders But we are not all Gods to soresee future Necessities Seeing the case is so that you cannot any longer resist the law of the slesh it is better to Marry than to Burn. Thus we have proved that the Doctrine of the Invalidity of Marriages Contracted after a Vow of Continence was unknown in the first Ages of Christianity opposed in the last and not universally received in the Church of Rome until defined with an Anathema by the Council of Trent which thereby left the Controversie in a worse condition than they found it Having thus dispatched the Controversial I pass to the Historical part of my Design and therein will evince that the Celibacy of the Clergy was looked upon as a thing Indifferent in the Two first Centuries Proposed in the Third Magnified in the Fourth and in some Places Imposed in the Fifth yet so as that even that Imposition did infinitely differ from the present Doctrine and Discipline of the Church of Rome that however Commanded in some Provinces of the West it was no where universally Practised that in a few Ages this Imposition became obsolete this Yoke intolerable and Marriage universally prevailed till condemned and forbidden by the Popes of the Eleventh Age that even their Decrees and Canons became ineffectual by an universal Opposition of the whole Church and the lawfulness of Marriage in the Clergy was aftewards allowed and permitted by many Popes and one General Council of the Roman Church that all this while Celibacy never was imposed or practifed in the Eastern Church from the Apostles time but the Imposition of it was rejected by one and condemned by another Council of the Universal Church and obtained not even in the West till the Ambition and Usurpation of the Popes drawing to themselves the Disposition of all greater Ecclesiastical Preferments Poverty became necessary to the Married Clergy which caused Marriage to be wholly laid aside by them about Two Hundred years before the Reformation The Proof of these things shall be the Subject of the remaining part of my Discourse But first I shall premise these few Considerations I. Although the Ancient Church should have imposed or universally practised Celibacy yet the Obligation of that Law and Authority of that Example would be no reasonable much less necessary Motive to the present Church to continue the Imposition since the Reasons which might have induced the Antients to enjoyn or use it are long since ceased Those Reasons were to make the Clergy more ready and willing to renounce the Pleasures of the World and suffer Martyrdom in Times of Persecution and by their brave Example incite the Laity to the same generous Constancy of Mind In the flourishing and peaceable Times of the Churches there could be no other reason of enjoyning it than to procure an extraordinary Veneration to the Clergy by their Abstinence from permitted Pleasures and thereby facilitate and promote the common Edificacion of the Church As for the Reasons of some Admirers of Celibacy who were led aside with false Prejudices and pre-conceived Errours they vanish together with the detection of their falsity and do no longer oblige than those Errours are maintained But as for the other more solid Reasons Providence has annulled the first by giving rest unto the Church and an universal decay of Piety as well in Clergy as Laity hath defeated the second Since what perhaps was before Exemplary is now become a Scandal to the whole Christian World. This Cassander ingenuously confesseth in these words For those Reasons
wherewith the Antients were induced to make this Constitution are not only now ceased but are even become opposite For first we see that by this Decree Chastity and Continence is so far from being promoted in the Clergy that thereby a door is rather opened to all kind of Lust and Villany and Coveteousness in the Clergy so far from being restrained by it that it seems hence to have received no small encrease II. To Confute our Adversaries pretence of Antiquity and establish my Design it is sufficient to produce the Authority of some Fathers who thought the Imposition of Celibacy unlawful or inconvenient to the Church to alledge the Testimony of some Historians assuring us that Marriage was in their Time used indifferently by the Clergy and propose the Examples of some Married Clergy Althogh some Fathers and Writers were of a contrary Opinion or the greater part of the Clergy perhaps practised Celibacy For this will undeniably prove that both Marriage and Celibacy were left indifferent to all that neither was a Point of Faith an Institution of Christ or his Apostles or a matter of Universal Practice Whereas our Adversaries pretending herein to an uninterrupted Tradition and constant Practice of the whole Church in all Ages must to that end produce a perfect consent of all Doctors Historians and Writers and an universal Practice of all Times If any one Writer occur not condemned or any one Example not censured by the Church the Plea of Tradition must fall Some indeed of the Roman Church as Erasmus and Cassander pretended not to so Universal a Tradition and Practice but then they were so far from Defending the present Constitutions of the Church of Rome by the Authority of the Antients that they were open Enemies to the Imposinion of Celibacy However the Dissent of ancient Doctors and Councils and the diverse Practices of private Clergymen will manifestly demonstrate that Celibacy was neither universally imposed nor practised in the Ancient Church as it is at this day in the Church of Rome but that as well as Marriage left indifferent both to Clergy and Laity if not in some particular Provinces yet at least in the Universal Church III. The numbers of the Married Clergy in the Ancient Church ought not to be estimated only from the accounts of them which we find in Ecclesiastical History of Monuments of Antiquity For the Relation of Wives or Children add neither Ornament nor Use to History nor have any part in it unless upon extraordinary occasions which rarely happen It concerns not Posterity to know whether Aristotle or Plato were Married since neither Marriage nor Celibacy will inhaunce their Vertue or diminish their Worth. And if mention of Wives be rarely found in Civil much less will it in Ecclesiastical History For Women sometimes bear a share in Civil Matters but in publick Acts of Religion and Affairs of the Church it is even unlawful for them to intermeddle So that if but a few Examples of Marriage in the Clergy of the Ancient Church can be produced we may thence reasonably conclude that the Married Clergy were then very numerous IV. The Reader may observe that almost all those places which we shall produce out of the Ancient Doctors for the lawfulness of Marriage in the Clergy and against the Imposition of it are taken either from their dogmatical Treatises which were written deliberately and in a sedate temper of Mind or from their Harangues of Virginity where the very force of Truth extorted from them those Confessions Whereas the Testimonies made use of by our Adversaries for the Necessity or Convenience of Celibacy in the Clergy are for the most part drawn either from these Encomiastick Discourses of Virginity where they employed all the force of their Eloquence to magnisie the Merits of that State and recommend it to the World or from their Polemick Writings against the Adversaries of Celibacy wherein they were more intent to Destroy Errour than Establish Truth And no wonder if in both these Occasions corrupted with Prejudice or transported with Passion they bent the Bow to much and receded from that Exactness of Truth which is seated in the middle way To these Observations I may add the Confession of many Great Men in the Church of Rome who allow Celibacy neither to have been imposed nor universally practised in the Antient Church To pass by then Cassander Erasmus and the more moderate Divines of that Church I will produce only Gratian and Mendosa the last of which acknowledgeth that Marriage was always allowed to the Clergy and every where thought indifferent till forbidden by the Council of Illiberis in the Fourth Age the first goeth further in these words From this Authority an Epistle of Pope Pelagius in the Sixth Age it appeareth that the Clergy of the aforementioned Order Priests Deacons and Sub-deacons might then lawfully use Marriage And in the time of the Council of Ancyra in the Fourth Age the Continence of the Ministers of the Altar was not yet introduced Although perhaps by this last Passage only Deacons and Subdeacons are understood However in another place he speaks more generally When therefore we read that the Sons of the Clergy are promoted to be Popes or Bishops they are not to be thought to have been born of Fornication but of lawful Marriage which was every where permitted to the Clergy before the prohibition and is to this day permitted to them in the Eastern Church Having premised these few preliminary Observations I proceed to Matter of Fact and begin with the Apostles than whom none better knew the intention of their Master or the convenience of the Church and were the best Pattern of the Clergy for all future Ages St. Basil seems to have believed that all the Apostles were married where speaking of the excellency of of Marriage he brings in the Example of Peter and the rest of the Apostles The Interpolater of Ignatius his Epistles who lived in the beginning of the Sixth Age in like manner produceth the Examples of Peter Paul and the other Apostles or as the Latin Translator antienter than Ado Viennensis who flourished in the year 875. renders it the rest of the Apostles The Author of the Commentary upon the Epistles of St. Paul in St. Ambrose's Works who was Hilary a Deacon of Rome excepts St. Paul and St. John and affirms all the rest to have been married That St. Peter was married we are assured by the Authority of the Holy Scripture That he had a Daughter by her the antient Book of his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Travels writ before the times of Origen manifest to whom the latter Legendary Writers give the name of Petronilla St. Peter is kniwn to have had a Wife and the begitting of Children hindred him not from obtaining precedency among the Apostles saith the abovementioned Hilary in his Questions upon both Testaments falsly ascribed to St. Austin For that he was
the Author of them is abundantly demonstrated by the learned Garnerius That he led about his Wife with him in his Travels and Preaching St. Paul plainly intimates in these words Have we not power to lead about a sister a wife 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as well as other Apostles or rather as the rest of the Apostles 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and as the brethren of the Lord and Cephas Our Adversaries indeed pretend that by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in this place is to be understood not a Wife but an assistant Woman commonly of the richer and more aged sort carried about by the Apostles to minister to their necessities provide them maintenance and serve them in the quality of Deaconesses And thus it must be acknowledged the greatest part of the Antients did interpret it However I will oppose to that Opinion some considerable and perhaps convictive Arguments As first the ordinary acception of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 both in the Septuagint and the New Testament where the name Wife is never designed by any other word Secondly this Interpretation was by the Antients received from Tertullian who first proposed it in his Book of Monogamy which he writ after he was become a Montanist Thirdly the contrary Opinion of all the Catholicks in Tertullian's time For in his Exhortations to Chastity writ likewise after his fall decrying the excellency of Marriage he introduceth the Catholicks thus objecting to him It was lawful even for the Apostles to marry and to lead about their wives with them And indeed Clemens Alexandrinus the most Learned and Orthodox of all the Writers of the three sirst Centuries expresly interprets this place of Wives and further adds That St. Peter had several Children by his Wife Not to mention Cardinal Humbert in latter Ages who although a bitter Enemy of Priests Marriage allows and followeth this Interpretation That is more considerable which Eusebius relates from the same Clemens that St. Peter saw his Wife suffer Martyrdom and standing by her exhorted her generously to undergo it which alone might demonstrate that she accompanied him in all his Travels Since excepting St. Stephen and St. James the Great none suffered Death for the Christian Faith till the latter end of Nero's Reign when St. Peter was wholly employed in the West The Marriage of St. Paul however commonly denied by the Antients and universally by the Moderns is attested by great Authorities Clemens Alexandrinus the Disciple of Pantaenus who by the Testimony of Photius had those for his Masters who had seen and conversed with the Apostles and who himself writ within 125 years after the death of St. Paul and had travelled into Palaestine expresly affirms it From him Euseâ—…ius receiving this Tradition transcribeth and approveth it These two Authorities are sufficient alone to create a probability However I will observe that many still retained the same Opinion in the end of the Fourth Age. So St. Hierom assureth us some believed in his time St. Chrysostom acknowledgeth the same thing and adds that many in his time maintained St. Paul directed those words to his Wife Philipp 4. 3. I intreat thee also true yoke-fellow 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For those words in the Attick dialect the most elegant of the Greek Tongue may be translated my faithful Wife Nay in the Sixth Age the Interpolator of Ignatius's Epistles hath these words In praising Virginity I do not blame all other holy Men because they used Marriage For I desire only to be thought worthy of God to be placed at their feet in the kingdom of heaven as of Abraham Isaac Jacob Joseph and the other Prophets as of Peter and Paul and the other Apostles who used Marriage This place the Ancient Latin Interpreter who lived about the Eighth Age hath retained and translated with advantage It is a foolish as well as impudent Pretence which the Writers of the Church of Rome alledge to defeat the Authority of this Testimony They maintain that the name of St. Paul was foisted in by the fraud of some latter Greeks at least Reformed Printers and therefore the Index Expurgatorius commands his name to be wiped out of all Editions yet have they no other Foundation for this consident Calumny than the Authority of two Manuscript Copies which they pretend to be very antient the one of Matthias Corvinus King of Hungary the other of Magdalen Colledge in Oxford taken up upon the Credit of an Irish â—…ugitive Whereas the first was never seen since the days of Ambrosius Camaldulensis who lived 250 years since the other Bishop Usher saw and found to be no older than the year 1490. That the Reformed Printers corrupted not this place appears from all the Editions before the Reformation particularly those of Fabor Stapulensis Paris 1498. Strasbourg 1502. and Jod Clichtovaus Paris 1515. and many Editions set forth by Papists since the Reformation wherein the name of St. Paul is found The Greeks are no less cleared from all fraud herein by the consent of the Latin Copies particularly of one 800. years old in Baliol Colledge in Oxford mentioned by Dr. James wherein although some zealous Romanist had blotted out the name of St. Paul and the other Apostles yet they had done it so slightly that the words were still easily legible Now whether St. Peter led about his Wife with him or St. Paul was married is not of so great moment to our case as is the Conclusion which may be evidently drawn from the belief entertained by some of the Antients both of the one and of the other For even if we should grant their Opinion to have been erroneous yet it manifestly demonstrates that in their time the Celibacy of the Clergy was neither believed to have been instituted by the Apostles nor universally practised by the preceding Ages nor the use of Marriage inconvenient much less incompatible to the Priesthood Had any of these Opinions been generally received in their time it is impossible they should have been so stupid as to believe the Apostles had done a thing contrary to their own Institution or the laudable practise of succeeding Ages or the Dignity of their Office. Of the other Apostles St. Philip had Three Daughters whom by the Testimony of Clemens Alex. he Married to so many Husbands Of the Four Virgin Daughters of Philip the Deacon we read in the Acts of the Apostles The Marriage of Nicholas the Deacon is Famous in Ecclesiastical History which because the Mis-representation of it gave occasion to many Errours and the Imposers of Celibacy in the Eleventh Age constantly traduced the Marriage of Priests with the Title of Nicolaite Heresie it will not be amiss here to rectifie Clemens Alex. the most Ancient of all who mention it for St. Irenaeus saith only That the Nicolaites came from Nicolas the Deacon relateth it it thus Nicolas having a very beautiful Wife became
Virginity began to be highly extolled and gained great Reputation in the Third Age. Many Causes concurred to advance this Reputation as the Convenience of the Church at that time the Mistakes of Catholick and Artifices of Hereticks I shall begin with the last and observe that in all the numerous train of Heresies from the Apostles time to the Council of Nice scarce was there any one which did not condemn Marriage or at least decry the Dignity of it and cry up Celibacy as the most Perfect and most Vertuous state and the nearest way to Heaven Which alone is no small Prejudice to the Doctrine and Practice of the present Church of Rome that the imaginary Excellencies of Celibacy were unknown to the World till discovered by the grossest and most foolish Hereticks that ever infected the Christian Church I do not hereby accuse the Church of Rome of their Heresie yet cannot but take notice that in urging Celibacy to her Clergy she proceeds upon the same Principles with them a greater Perfection and more refined Piety an unusal abstinence from all Pollutions of the Flesh and Pleasures of the World That some of them enjoyned not Celibacy to all their Followers but only persuaded it to those who aimed at Perfection and that the Heresie of Eustathius condemned by the Council of Gangra was in terminis revived by the Popes and Councils of the Eleventh Age. Saturnilus Disciple of Menander led the dance He first called Marriage the Doctrine of the Devil and was herein followed by an infinite rabble of Hereticks Nicolaites Cerinthians the Sects of Marcus Basildes Carpocrates Isidorus Marcion Cassian Tatian and many others who absolutely rejected Marriage as unlawful and impure and beneath the dignity of a spiritual and more perfect Christian To this end they pretend no less specious Reasons than are at this day alledged by the Patrons of Celibacy as that being freed from the Cares of a Family they might attend the better to Acts of Devotion and Piety That it was a noble Attempt and worthy the ambition of a Christian to surmount all the inclinations of the Flesh and by afflicting of it intirely subject it to the Soul not to yeild to the unruly Passions of the Body but rather by such a Mortification increase the perfections of the Soul with Faith and Knowledge Nor were these their only Reasons They also pretend to Tradition and although immediately after the Apostles deaths intitled their horrid Doctrines to those Sacred Names and to confirm their Plea forged Gospels Acts and Histories under the Apostles names injurious to Marriage and consonant to their own Opinions But so gross a Heresie however backed with great and specious pretences survived not the middle of the Third Age. When that declined other more subtil and refined Hereticks arose in their stead who indirectly and obliquely oppose Marriage yet upon the same topick of greater Purity and Perfection Thus the Montanists condemned all second Marriages and reviled the Catholicks who defended them with the opprobious Title of Pryâ—…hici or Carnal Men. Thus the Novatians revolted from the Church and accused her of licentionsness because she admitted to Communion those Digamists who after a Divorce of one Wife for whatsoever cause even for that of Adultery had married another Lastly thus the Manichees although enjoyning Celibacy to none nor forbidding Marriage to any through a mistaken Impurity in the use of it excluded all married Persons from the rank of their Elect or more perfect Christians and permitted it only to their Hearers or inferiour order of their Sect. And when all these Heresies were every where exploded by the Catholick Church the Reputation of Celibacy still found entertainment in the World as being more speciously and cunningly proposed especially by the Eustathian Hereticks who aflixed it only to the Clergy and refused to communicate with married Priests imagining the Sacraments by them administred to be wholly ineffectual Thus did the Celibacy of the Clergy gradually advance from a gross and foolish Heresie to a regular and well formed errour And however these antient Hereticks committed the most abominable Villanies and unnatural Lusts under pretence of absolute Purity and Continence so that what Pope Leo said of the Priscillianists might justly be applied to them all They detested Marriage because there is no liberty for uncleanness where the Chastity of the Nuptial Bed and the hope of Posterity is preserved notwithstanding their promiscuous Fornications and brutish Lusts which gave scandal to the very Heathens The glorious pretence of Chastity and Perfection gained infinite applause in the World and drew multitudes of Sectators after them The very name of Encratites or continent Persons common to all these Hereticks commanded Veneration from 〈◊〉 people and all were apt to admire an imaginary Perfection which they found themselves so much wanted It seems ever to have been the unhappiness of Mankind to be deluded with excesses of Vertue although all such naturally degenerate into Vices or at least into things indifferent Thus a rash and precipitate boldness is admired beyond a moderate aud well-governed valour and Enthusiasm ever gains greater esteem than a sober and rational Devotion Thus among the Speculative Sects of Heathen Philosophy Platonists among the Moral Sects Stoicks and Cynicks obtained the greatest applause meerly because the first pretended to an extraordinary and perhaps impossible abstraction of the Mind from corporeal and sensitive Objects and the latter boasted of a perfect Immunity from all Passions and the exercise of a tyrannical command over the Body And both seemed to trample under foot the considerations of Flesh and Blood and surmount the ordinary Capacity of Mankind Such prejudices as these recommended Celibaâ—…y to the World and advanced the pretentions of these antient Hereticks Who although they corrupted not the whole Church with the Poison of their Errour yet they almost every where introduced false Notions of Marriage into the Minds of Men and although they could not cause it to be universally condemned yet at least procured it to be generally despised And indeed never did any Heresie prevail in the Church which did not leave some tincture of it self even in the Minds of Catholicks Thus it may be observed that there is not one Writer in the Fifth Age wherein some touch either of Pelagianism or Predestinatism may not be discovered How far the Heresie of these Encratites prevailed and secretly corrupted the Judgment of Catholicks I shall next enquire First then The Relicks of the Eustathian Heresie so far prevailed among the Catholicks that many of them believed it highly indecent for him to meddle with the Administration of Sacred Things who indulged himself the liberty of Marriage as if he had contracted some Impurity thereby and made himself unworthy of the holy Office an Errour common to all the Patrons of Celibacy which proceeded so far in the time of Gregory Nazianzen that many would not willingly receive Baptism or the Eucharist
from married Priests but much farther in the time of Hildebrand and once again advanced into the formal Heresie of the Eustathians From the Montanists the Catholicks received their dislike of second Marriages one of the most palpable Errours of Antiquity since what the Apostle expresly alloweth and in some Cases adviseth most of the Ancients decry as scandalous and inconvenient oft-times as a tolerable Evil and sometimes even as a grievous sin Tertullian hath written whole Books against it Athenagoras calls it a decent Adultery Origen maintains that a Digamist however otherwise a person of good conversation and adorned with all other Vertues not to belong to the Church I might add many other Fathers and Councils who imposed a tedious Penance upon Digamists but the thing is sufficiently notorious This prejudice against Digamy was first taken up in the end of the Second Age. Before that time second Marriage was thought indifferent and wholly innocent Hermes in â—…he First Age had determined the lawfulness of it and Clemens Alexandrinus in the next pleads largely for it From the Gnosticks the Catholicks received an erroneous Opinion of some Impurity and Sinfulness or at least Imperfection in the use of Marriage They scrupled not to use the Authority of Books forged by those Hereticks in prejudice of Marriage such as the Gospel of the Egyptians the Acts of Paul and Tecla and the like and in some measure adopted their Errours Thus Origen and one of the most early Favourers of Celibacy writeth thus of Marriage Although I will not positively pronounce yet I suppose these are some ordinary actions of Men which however they be free from sin are not worthy to be honoured with tbe presence of the Holy Gospel for instance lawful Marriage is not indeed sinful yet while conjugal Acts are performed the Holy Ghost will not be present although he seems to be a Prophet who performs them St. Hierom the great Patron of Celibacy in the next Age goeth farther and disputing against Jovinian doth in some places make Marriage not only sinful but even damnable If it be good saith he for a Man not to touch a Woman then it is evil to touch her For nothing is contrary to Good but Evil. While I perform the Duty of a Husband I do not the Duty of a Christian For the Apostle commandeth we should always pray If so we must never serve the ends of Marriage For as often as I do that I cannot pray I suppose that the end of Marriage is eternal Death The Earth indeed is filled by Marriage but Paradise by Virginity And as the Apostle permits not those who are already married to put away their Wives so he forbideth Virgins to marry Marriage is permitted only as a remedy of Lust it being more tolerable to be prostituted to one man than many Nor did this Errour expire with those Heresies from whence they rose About the year 600. when Augustin Archbishop of Canterbury desired of Pope Gregory some Instructions for his new Converts in England and Rules of Ecclesiastical Discipline he gave him this for one A Man after he hath laid with his own Wife ought not to enter into the Church till he hath washed himself with water nor must then immediately enter Whereas Clemens Alexandrinus praising the Simplicity of the Christian Religion instanceth in this very Ceremony which although used of old by the Jews he saith was no where practised in his time by the Christians Many other erroneons Opinions obtained in the antient Church which proceeded from no other cause but this I will observe but one more their Opinion of the lawfulness of Self-murder to prevent the loss of Virginity imagining somewhat of Sinfulness and Impurity was inseparably annexed even to the natural act of Generation So Eusebius bestows large Encomiums upon some Virgins and Matrons who had laid violent hands upon themselves to prevent the Lust of Heathens And Aldhelmus citeth a Sentence of some Father more antient than himself Self-murder is unlawful unless when Chastity is endangered which he consirms and illustrates with many Reasons and Examples Such weaknesses of the Antients had deserved indeed to be buried in Oblivion if they had not influenced their Practice and laid the Foundations of an Errour which continueth even to this day that Marriage is a state Unbefitting and Celibacy therefore Necessary to the Clergy An Opinion first taken up upon those Prejudices which we have just now mentioned and maintained upon the Authority of those who are led away with these Mistakes So that to take away the Plea of Antiquity from the Church of Rome in the case of Celibacy it were sufficient to shew that the Antients received and embraced it meerly for the sake of these Prejudices and Mistakes Which we have already done For these were the great and only Arguments of Celibacy for the first Thousand years while none were yet so foolish as to imagin it to be of Divine or Apostolical Institution The pre-conceived Opinions of the impurity of Marriage in all and great indecency of it in those who administred Holy things tended directly to introduce the Celibacy of the Clergy For these Reasons Origen and Eusebius who were the only Orthodox Writers before the Council of Nice who openly prefer the Celibacy of the Clergy to their Marriage desired it might be introduced For they rather faintly wished the thing than dogmatically used it and by their Wishes manifest that it was not yet introduced As for their unreasonable prejudice against Digamy that contributed no less to the cause of Celibacy than the other Mistakes For the unlawfulness of Digamy once supposed the force of the Apostles Precept of Marriage to all who could not contain became wholly enervate since a Man is no less subject to Incontinence after enjoyment of a Wife for some few years perhaps days than he was before he ever married Besides all the Patrons of Celibacy failed not to make use of this Argument That if Second Marriage be unlawful or indecent to the Laity even First Marriage will be so to the Clergy it being usual for them who disallowed Second Marriage in all to think First Marriage only a tolerable evil and permitted in some as Divorce was formerly to the Jews And then it was a natural order of Superstition first to forbid Second and then all Marriage to the Clergy Therefore we may observe that in the beginning of the Third Age Tertullian affirms Digamy to have been forbidden to the Clergy both by Apostolical Tradition aud the Discipline of the Church and to be generally discussed by them in his time as a scandalous Imperfection if not a Crime But we no where find Marriage forbidden to the Clergy till the time of the Apostolick Canons first published in the end of this or beginning of the next Age. These Mistakes and Prejudices and Reasons of Celibacy founded upon them were common to both
Churches but there was one Reason peculiar to the Western Church which however it may seem light was of great efficacy and that was the unhappy Fall of Tertullian into Montanism That Great and Learned Person naturally endowed with an ardent Genius of a severe and inflexible temper of Mind infinitely zealous for all outward appearances of religious Mortification and after his Fall prompted with that Enthusiastick Spirit which was the peculiar Character of the Montanists set himself to advance the Opinion of his Sect with all imaginable vigour The unlawfulness of Digamy was the chief Tenet of that Sect and that founded upon an erroneous Supposition of some Imperfection in the Use even of First Marriage In maintaining and recommending these Errours to the World Tertullian employed all the force of his Wit and Eloquence to debase the dignity of Marriage and extoll the merits of a Single-life whether Widowhood or Virginity The extraordinary reverence and esteem which his great Learning and apparent Zeal procured to him in succeeding Ages mightily propagated his Errours and corrupted his Readers with false Prejudices and Notions of Marriage and Virginity For altho' it had been reasonable and sufficient to say of him what St. Hierome once said when pressed hard with his Authority He was a Schismatick no Writer of the Church Yet few considered that the persuasive force of his Eloquence was more sensible than the remembrance of his Schism and then few enquired which Books he writ before and which after his Fall or rather it was a common Errour that he writ very few after and almost all before his Fall. Whereas in truth he writ before his Fall only the Three little Treatises of Baptism Repentance and Prayer not the Twentieth part of his Works now extant To this Reputation of Tertullian and the ill Effects of it contributed not a little the infinite esteem and veneration which St. Cyprian had for his Writings while unwary Persons imagined that the deference which that blessed Martyr paid to his Learning and Zeal was an effect of the soundness and orthodoxy of his Doctrine However certain it is that the Fall of Tertullian advanc'd and encreas'd the former Prejudices and this I take to be the only reason why Celibacy ever prevailed more in the Western than in the Eastern Church All these Prejudices were in themselves unlawful But there were other Reasons of preferring Celibacy in the Ancient Church which might have been allowed if not attended with such fatal Consequences And first many Catholicks openly espoused the cause of Celibacy and others winked at their Policy meerly to prevent the Delusion of more simple Catholicks by the no less glorious than fraudulent Pretences of the Encratites Who to use St. Hierome's words because they knew the name of Virginity was venerable covered the Wolves under Sheeps-cloathing Antichrist pretended to act the part of Christ and veiled the uncleanness of their Lives with the false honour of that usurped Name They esteemed it a laudable Policy to prevent the Mischief by proposing to the Practice of Men that very Perfection which the Hereticks so much boasted of and the Multitude were apt to admire as being always casier led with great Pretences than sober Truth A not unlike Policy with this was afterwards used by St. Chrysostome against the Arians when fearing the People would be seduced by their Enthusiastical singing of Hymns he set up the same way of singing of Hymns among the Catholicks and thereby prevented the design of the Arians a Stratagem as the Historian observeth and may be applied to our case which however specious was the Occasion of very ill Consequences While Celibacy thus gained ground by the Artisice of Hereticks and Connivance of Catholicks few interposed themselves to undeceive Mankind and stop the torrent of these vulgar Prejudices as well because the immoderate esteem of Celibacy seem'd a Matter of no great moment while it was forcibly imposed upon none nor made necessary to any as because the dis-favour and unjust suspicions of the Multitude would probably have attended such an undertaking While unreasonable Men would have esteemed such a Person as a Libertine an Enemy of refined and more severe Religion and thought him to have therein pleaded only for his own Passions and Inclinations And when Celibacy became once universally esteemed and great numbers of Lay-men vowing Virginity voluntarily abstained from Marriage who by their supposed Sanctity and specious Abstinence drew to themselves the eyes and admiration of all Men the Clergy also were necessitated to make some advances in the Use of Celibacy that they might not suffer loss of Reputation and seem less Vertuous and Spiritual than Lay-men Hence St. Hierome frequently urgeth the Celibacy of the Clergy by the Example of Lay-Virgins affirming it to be highly indecent that the Laity should exceed the Clergy even in voluntary Acts of Piety and Mortification This Reason afterwards received great advantage from the wonderful encrease of Monkery and Vows of Continence in the Fourth and Fifth Ages insomuch that Faustus the Manichee objected to St. Austin that the immoderate Commendation of Virginity had among the Catholicks produced this Effect that in all their Churches there seem'd to be a greater number of professed Virgins than married Women No wonder then if Reverence attending the unmarried and Contempt the married Clegry Celibacy prevailed in the Church and Marriage by being dis-esteeemed became also dis-used especially since Ambition contributed not a little to it For from the end of the Fourth Age the Bishops and greater Clergy were generally chosen out of the Monks and thereby Celibacy became the nearest way to Preferment But to return to the Third Age the frequent Persecutions of that time did not a little advance the Cause of Celibacy it being highly convenient to the Church that the Clergy should shew an Example of Constancy and Resolution to all other Christians which it was believed they would more readily perform when freed from the encumbrances of a married state and not with-holden with the temptations of Wife and Children For the fury of the Heathen Persecutors generally fell most heavy upon the Clergy and sometimes was directed against them only So that to be promoted to any eminent Place in the Church was to be exposed to certain Martyrdom For this reason as Eusebius somewhere relates in the Choice of Bishops single Persons were commonly preferred before married Men in Times of Persecution And then Celibacy was no grievous and intolerable burthen when attended with a continual Expectation of Death and being hurried away to Execution To which may be added that few were then received into the Priesthood but aged Men who by a long course of Vertue had given sufficient proof of their Continence and unspotted Chastity Whereas in the Church of Rome Boys were admitted to Profess or make a Vow of Continence at Fourteen Girls at Twelve years of age till the Council of Trent which reduced it
to Sixteen All these Reasons concurred in the First Ages to encrease the esteem of Celibacy and prejudice the Marriage of the Clergy The way was opened by forbidding Second Marriage to the Clergy and receiving none into Holy Orders who had married twice after Baptism For if a Man married once before and again after Baptism he was commonly reputed no Digamist This Prejudice against Second Marriage encreased so far that all were made uncapable of Holy Orders who had married Widows lest they should seem to countenance thereby the supposed scandal of Digamy I mean not hereby that Second Marriage was forbidden to the Clergy by any Council or Orders denied to all Digamists none excepted for neither the one nor the other of those Suppositions is true but only that it became the general and ordinary practice of the Church not to permit Second Marriage to those already ordained nor Orders to those already twice married In the same manner a Custom was introduced and by the end of the Third Age established in the Church that the Clergy might indeed freely retain their Wives married before the reception of Orders but not marry after Orders once received Not that this was yet forbidden by any Canon nor practised without Exception for the contrary of that we shall immediately demonstrate but only was the usual and more ordinary Discipline of the Church Whence both the Prohibition of Digamy and Marriage after Orders to the Clergy were inserted among the Apostolical Canons wherein that is the Sixteenth this the Twenty fifth Canon These Apostolical Canons were not the Constitutions of any Council much less Precepts and Institutions of the Apostles but only the Customs and Usages of the Eastern Church in the end of the Third and beginning of the Fourth Age which seem to have been collected about that time by some private Hand however then authorized by the Use and afterwards confirmed by the Decree of the Church This Custom of the Ancient Church however it may seem almost equivalent to an Imposition of Celibacy was yet far from it For first it was not so strict and universal as to admit no Exception Marriage was permitted to many even after the reception of Orders as we shall shew by and by from the Canon of Ancyra and allowed indifferently to all if they receded from the Execution of their Office and returned to Lay-Communion in order to it as we shall also hereafter prove Secondly If any Person to be ordained were not yet married and did in the least suspect he should not be able afterwards to contain without Marriage he was not only permitted but even advised by the Church first to Marry and then to receive Orders So that they frequently married whilest Candidates of the Priesthood and already designed to that Holy Office perhaps but some few days before their admittance into it So the Sixth General Council renewing this very Apostolick Canon forbid any to marry after Orders once received and adds But if any one who comes to be ordained hath a mind to joyn himself unto a Wife with the bond of Marriage let him do it before he be ordained Deacon or Sub-deacon or Priest and then receive Orders Thirdly By allowing to the Clergy the free Use of Marriage contracted before their Ordination they acknowledged both the lawfulness and decency of their Marriage whether contracted before or after Ordination For if there be any indecency in Marriage which makes it unbecoming the dignity and holiness of the Priesthood it must be in the Use of it as all confess and if so the Use of Marriage contracted before as well as after Ordination will become indecent For the Contract itself is a thing most honest and decorous so far from carrying any impurity and indecency along with it that the Churh of Rome believeth it to be a Sacrament What were the particular Reasons why the Antient Church permitted to the Clergy the Use of the one Marriage and disallowed the other may be probably reduced from what we have already said For those Men who were led away by the Mistakes and Prejudices produced in the Church by the Heresie of the Encratites endeavoured at least to introduce this Custom when they despaired of a total Abrogation of the Clergies Marriage and perhaps thought that intolerable in itself or inconvenient to the Church And then those who otherwise clearly perceived the falshood of these Prejudices contented themselves with silence and connived at the Introduction of this Custom as well for fear of a Popular Odium and Dis-esteem as because they were convinced by the Reasons last mentioned that such a Custom if it proceeded no farther was little less than equivalent to a total Permission of Marriage To which may be added that the Rites of Marriage being anciently especially among the Greeks always celebrated with great Riot and Luxury continued for many days together it was thought unbefitting the gravity of a Clergyman to be present at much more to be chief Actor in such licentious Solemnities Upon which account the Councils of Laodicea and Agatha forbid the Clergy to be present at Nuptial Feasts although the Quinisext Council restrained that Prohibition only to the Iudicrous and more trifling part of the Solemnity In some of the Clergy these Prejudices of the Excellency of Celibacy and the Inconvenience of Marriage to the dignity of their Order prevailed so far that upon pretence of Continence and greater Purity they sequestred their Wifes although unwilling from their bed and sometimes from their society The superstitious and scandalous conduct of these Men was universally condemned and censured by the Church Whence among the Apostolick Canons this is one Let no Bishop Priest or Deacon put away his Wife upon pretence of Religion If he doth let him be excomunicated and if he continue obstinate be degraded Our Adversaries indeed pretend that this Canon was not opposed to a denial of Nuptial Duties by the Clergy to their Wives but to a denial of Maintainance and turning them out of doors to beg their Living But the vanity of this Plea is evident For not to say that the constant acceptance of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 imports no more than a sequestration from the Bed the Canon in the sense of our Adversaries would be useless and trifling For we do not find nor can imagin that so great an abuse ever obtained in the Church as that the Clergy should eject their innocent Wives and expose them to want and poverty Whereas that many removed them from their Bed and believed their embraces unlawful after Orders received is already clearly proved and on all sides confessed The Errour of the Impurity of Marriage had so far obtained in the Minds of many that it was necessary for the Church to interpose her Judgment and vindicate the Cause of injured Marriage For as Aristenus truly paraphrases this Canon A Clergyman by sequestring his Wife from his Bed
dwell with you you ought not to have chosen Virginity but to have married For it had been much better so to have married than thus to profess Virginity For such a marrige neither God condemns nor Man blames for 't is an honourable State injurious to none scandalous to none But this Virginity performed in the company of Men is accused by all Men as worse than open Fornication Lastly thus St. Hierom describes them I am ashamed to speak it it is sad but true Whence did this plague of House-keepers enter into the Church Whence without Marriage another name for Wives yea whence this new kind of Concubines I will say more whence these Whores tied to the oompany of one Man They lodge in the same House in one Chamber and oft-times in one Bed and yet they call us unreasonably suspicious if we think any thing amiss Such then were these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 first introduced in the middle of the Third Age and notwithstanding the frequent Prohibitions of Councils and Declimations of Fathers continued in the Church but with greatest Scandal about the Year 400. till at last they degenerated into open Concubines in the Church of Rome in which state the Reformation found them generally then thought Lawful or at least a venial Sin although none since hath dared to defend them They were forbidden in the Ancient Church by the Councils of Eliberis Ancyra Nice the First and Third of Carthage the Third of Constantinople the Second of Nice Aquisgran and many others and by the Emperor Justinian in his Novels As for Emasculation that was severely forbidden by the Apostolick Canons and the Council of Nice and seems to have been dis-used before the Year 500. Upon occasion of these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it will not be here inconvenient to speak somewhat of the Book de Singularitate Clericorum which we just now cited This Book however in its Title it may seem to oppose the Marriage of the Clergy is one of the most pregnant Evidences of the Use of it in the Ancient Church that is now extant It is by some ascribed to Origen by others to St. Augustin but by most to St. Cyprian However all Learned Men now agree that it belongs to none of them The late Learned Editors of St. Cyprian's Works at Oxford conjecture it to have been written about the time of Bede Rather it was most certainly written before the middle of the Fifth Age because the Author of it makes use of the old Italick Version which was in use in the Latin Church before St. Hierom's Translation Most probably therefore it was writ in the Fourth Age. The scope of it is to decry and reform the abuse of House-keepers which as the Author saith was then become so scandalous in the Church that the unmarried Clergy could not endure to sleep without the company of a Woman If in the heat of Disputation he lets fall any thing injurious to Marriage it is such as opposeth no less the Marriage of the Laity than of the Clergy and indeed the former part of the Treatise is nothing else but a Satyr against Women But the design of the Author and the lawfulness and use of the Clergies Marriage in his time may be evidently collected from many places I will produce one or two of them premising this Observation that the Author ranks those Women also among the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who lived in the House with married Clergymen if they had no Relation of Kindred or Marriage to them That the company of near Relations was never denied to the Clergy since proximity of Blood and the dictates of Nature sufficiently secured their Honour and that all other Women but Relations and Wives are by this Author termed Alienae and Extraneae Strange Women If then saith he the Clergy instead of putting away their Wives so fondly adhere to Strange Women What would they do if they were commanded to put away their Wives and Children Or how will they be able to renounce their Kindred for Christ who preferr to the Commands of Christ Women endeared to them by no other Obligations And in another place I affectionately entreat you O Clergymen if any of you hath a Mother a Daughter a Sister a Wife or a Kinswoman living with you ye so save her that no Waiting-maid live with them nor any other Strange Woman have access lest you be suspected to retain your Relations with you for this only reason that ye may under that Pretence take Strange Women into your houses If they cannot want the service or assistance of Maids or the company of Friends of their own Sex it is better that they should remove into another house than that ye should entertain Strange Women for their sakes For as it would be unfit that a Clergyman should deprive them of the necessary assistance of their Sex so it is indecent that they should injure his Reputation by bringing suspicious Women into his company To which may be added the Testimony before cited wherein the Author upbraids to those Clergymen who could not live without House-keepers theâ—… 〈◊〉 to marry Wives We are now come to the great and Famous Council of Nice wherein the Cause of Celibacy was debated and decided I will represent the whole matter in the words of Socrates the Historian c It seemed good to some Bishops to introduce a new Law into the Church That the Clergy I mean Bishops Priests and Deacons should not lay with their Wives which they had married being yet Lay-men And when the thing was proposed to he consulted of Paphnutius standing up in the midst of the Assembly of the Bishops contended vehemently that so heavy a Yoke ought not to be imposed upon the Clergy saying that even Marriage was undefiled or chaste and the Use of it honourable that they should take heed of rather injuring the Church by this excess of Severity For that all could not contain neither perhaps could the chastity of every one's Wife be preserved or as Sozomen expresseth it For that it was a thing very hard to be borne and would perhaps be the cause of Incontinence both to themselves and to their Wives But he asserted the company of a lawful Wife to be Chastity that it was sufficient that he who was first Ordained should not Marry after it according to the Ancient Discipline of the Church but that none ought to be separated from that Wife which he had before married while he was yet a Lay-man And this he said being himself unmarried and brought up from his Youth in a Monastick and Ascetick Life The whole Council yielded to the Arguments of Paphnutius and therefore ceased any farther Debate leaving it to the will of every one whether they would abstain from the company of their Wives or not Sozomen and Nicephorus relate it almost in the same words Suidas in the
very same Cassidiorus in the like words and so do Ivo Carnotensis Gratian and Blastares and who is ancienter than them all except the two first Gelasius Cyzicenus who transcribed the Acts of that Council out of a Copy which had belonged to Dalmatius Bishop of Cycicum who was present in the Ephesine Council in the Year 431. So that they who doubt of the Truth of this History may with equal reason deny the Existence of the Nicene Council since both are attested with the same Authorities Yet is this done by many Writers of the Church of Rome particularly Barronius Bellarmine and especially Turrian whose trifling Arguments the Learned Mâ—…ndosa relates and confutes More general and notorious hath been the fraud of the Church of Rome in pretending that the Third Canon of this Council made against the House-Keepers was directed against their Marriage Of this Imposture the Popes and Councils of the Eleventh Age made great use never failing to back their Decrees with the Authority of the Council of Nice The Canon is conceived in these words The Great Synod hath wholly forbidden to all Bishops Priests Deacons and all the Clergy to have a House-keeper unless she be a Mother or a Sister or an Aunt or those Persons only who are liable to no Suspicion That wives are not hereby forbidden to the Clergy would be impertinent to demonstrate if the unreasonableness of our Adversaries did not require it First then The Authority of all the Historians last mentioned prove this For if the Council had by this Canon forbid Wives to the Clergy the Advice of Paphnutius would not have been followed but rejected Secondly We before proved that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were a sort of Women far different from Wives who were never ranked in the number of them Thirdly The constant Practice of the Greek Church demonstrates it which ever allowed to the Clergy the society of their Wives from the Council of Nice to this day Fourthly Otherwise Marriage would have been forbidden to the Inferiour Orders also contrary to the Practice of the Universal Church in all Ages For the Canon after mention of Bishops Priests and Deacons subjoyns 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Prohibition to every one of the Clergy Fifthly The Emperor Theodosius Junior repeating and re-inforcing this very Canon after a Permission of the Cohabitation of Mothers Sisters or Aunts with the Clergy in the very words of the Canons subjoyns Those also chase love requireth not to be forsaken which were lawfully married before the Ordination of their Husbands For they are not unfittingly joyned to Clergymen who by their discreet Conversation made their Husbands worthy of the Priesthood And Balsamon thus Comments upon this Canon d Read the Canon of the Nicene Synod which forbid House-keepers to be retained By House-keepers the Canon which is the Third of that Synod meaneth Women taken into the houses of unmarried Clergymen and dwelling with them Lastly to omit the Confession of other Learned Romanists Mendoza not only granteth but proveth that in this Canon House-keepers were forbidden only to those Clergymen who never had married Wives or had lost them by death The Determination of the Council of Nice settled the Matter and put an end to the Controversie about Celibacy in the Eastern Church Thence forward is a profound Silence in the Acts of the Eastern Synods concerning the Marriage or Celibacy of the Clergy till the Quiniext Council in the Year 692. where Bishops were forbidden the Use of Marriage which till then was permitted to them as well as to the inferiour Clergy Of that Council we shall speak more largely hereafter In the mean while the general Custom which obtained in the Eastern Church of permitting to the Clergy the Use of Marriage contracted before but not after Ordination received some little variation Three several ways which deserve to be next observed First then A total abstinence of the Clergy from their Wives was introduced into the Province of Thessaly by Heliodorus Bishop of Trica under the Reign of Arcadius in the end of the Fourth or beginning of the Fifth Age. So that the Clergy accompanying with their Wives after Ordination were deposed The same Custom obtained in the Provinces of Thessalonica Achaia and Macedonia in the time of Socrates in the middle of the Fifth Age but in no other Part of the Eastern Church as he obesrveth How long this Custom continued in any of these Provinces is uncertain Secondly Towards the end of the Fourth Age it became very usual for Bishops both in the Eastern and Western Church when they were assumed to that Dignity publickly to Vow perpetual Abstinence from their Wives This they did voluntarily not necessitated to it by any Law as Socrates observeth that they might raise to themselves the greater Reputation of Holiness among the People and equal the supposed Continence of unmarried Bishops In this case it was not permitted to them to return to the embraces of their Wives If they did the Fact was esteemed Scandalous and sometimes punished with the Censures of the Church Thus among the Seven Heads of Accusation for which Antoninus Bishop of Ephesus was deposed by St. Chrysostome in a Synod in the Year 400. one was That after he had vowed Abstinence from his Wife he accompanied with her again and had Children by her Thus Urbicus Bishop of Clermont in France about the same time vowing Continence at his Consecration and afterwards begetting a Daughter of his Wife did voluntary Penance for it For this reason also Macliau Bishop of Vannes was Excomunicated by the Bishops of Bretagne for that having when persecuted by his Brother Chanao Prince of Bretagne fled to Vannes and there disguising himself professed Chastity and afterwards made Bishop he had upon the Death of his Brother resumed his Wife together with the Principality Thirdly which is most considerable A Custom was afterwards introduced in the Eastern Church whereby It was lawful to use the words of Blastares for Priests any time within Ten years to be reckoned from their Ordination to marry lawful Wives This Custom continued till the end of the Ninth Age when it was repealed by Leo the Emperor from whose Constitution it appears that this Custom was then become Universal although that instead of Ten years reads Two years In the Western Church the cause of Celibacy lay dormant till the end of the Fifth Age neither countenanced nor opposed by any publick Constitutions of the Church However in the mean while it gained infinite Veneration in the minds of Men and thereby made way for a publick Imposition of it This was attempted by Pope Siricius in the Year 385. a simple Pope as St. Hierome A Man of inconsiderate Zeal as Sacchinus the Jesuite calls him He in an Epistle to Himerius Bishop of Tarragon in Spain dated this Year after a long Harrangue against the Clergies Use
conformity to the custom of the Church of Rome Which seemeth hard and unmeet to me that he who is not used to such Continency and never before promised Chastity should be compelled to be separated from his Wife He makes no mention of Leo's Decree rather owns that Celibacy was not commanded to the Subdeacons of Sicily before Pelagius his Constitution but expresly asserts that Celibacy was not before then used by them and that then they first began to abstain from their Wives The Isle of Corsica was never subject to the Roman Patriarchat as appears from an antient Notitia of the several Patriarchats of the Church published by the learned Dr. Beverege and from Nilus Doxopatrius and therefore neither received nor were obliged by either the Constitutions of Popes about Celibacy or the Canons of those Provincial Councils before mentioned wherein none of their Bishops were present Upon this account Pope Gregory I. expresly allows to the Clergy of Corsica the use of Marriage We will saith he that the Priests Sacerdotes by which word Bishops as well as Presbyters are designed which dwell in Corsica be forbidden to converse with Women except only a Mother Sister or Wife who ought to be chastly govern'd That the Church of Milan was not subject to the Roman Patriarchat is fully proved by a Learned Divine of our Church And this was the reason why when once the voluntary Zeal of Celibacy which had possessed the Clergy of Milan in the time of St. Ambrose grew cold and expired Marriage was publickly used by the Clergâ—… of that Church without any Interruption till the times of Hildebrand as we shall hereafter occasionally shew The same was the Case of the Church of England which owing no Obedience to the antient Papal Constitutions and not intermedling in the Councils which decreed Celibacy retained to her Clergy the free use of Marriage till by the Procurement and Artifices of Anselm she forbid it in a National Synod in the Twelfth Century as we shall hereafter more largely prove This was the Case of Celibacy in those Provinces which were not influenced by the Authority of the Roman Patriarch nor had obliged themselves by any Synodical Act. Let us now view the State of those Provinces which were the Stage of those several Councils we before numbred viz. Spain France and Germany in the Ninth Age. That the so often repeated Canons of the Spanish Councils were unsuccessful appears from St. Isidore Bishop of Sevil about the year 600. who in his Book of Ecclesiastical Offices describing the several Duties of the Clergy saith Let Clergymen endeavour perpetually to preserve the Chastity of their Bodies inviolable or at least be joyned with the Bond of one Marriage And indeed how hardly the inferiour Clergy of Spain brooked the necessity of Celibacy imposed on them by their Bishops in several Synods is evident from the Policy of Veitiza King of Spain in the year 702. who conscious of his own Wickedness and Tyranny and fearing the Clergy in revenge of it might excite the Populacy to take up Arms and dethrone him resolved to oblige the Clergy and gain their affections by some extraordinary Favour which might be received by them with universal Applause and therefore by publick Edict gave them Liberty to marry Wives or retain them already married In the Churches of France and Germany Celibacy most certainly was not universally practised by the Clergy in the end of the Eighth Age when Pope Adrian offered to Charles the Great his Collection of Canons fitted for the Government of the Churches in his Kingdoms The Sixth Canon of that Collection is taken out of the Apostolick Canons and is conceived in these words Let not a Presbyter put his Wife out of his Eamily but chastly govern her As for France Boniface Archbishop of Mentz and Pope Zachary's Legat there had complained not many years before That the Episcopal Sees were for the most part bestowed upon Adulterate Clergymen For so he calls the married Clergy The universal freedom of Marriage which the German Clergy pressed in the times of Hildebrand argue the Canons of the Council of Worms Mentz and Metz in the Ninth Age to have been unsuccessful and never fully received in that Church Nay at the same time a Famous Bishop of Germany who lived and died with the reputation of a Saint did strongly oppose all imposition of Celibacy This was Huldericus or Udalricus Bishop of Augspurg who in his Epistle to Pope Nicholas I. demonstrates to him the Injustice of his Decree against the Marriage of the Clergy and persuades him to revoke it No such Decree indeed of Nicholas is now extant however Gratian citeth a Decretal Epistle of his to Odo Archbishop of Vien wherein he forbids Marriage to the Four Superiour Orders of the Clergy As for the Decree against hearing the Masses of married Priests which Gratian produceth in the next Chapter that most certainly belongeth to Nicholas II. although the last Collectors of the Councils have ranked it among the Decrees of Nicholas I. Most probably then Nicholas had directed into Germany a Decretal of the same nature with that to Odo and sollicited the reception of it by his Emissaries whose Diligence and Artifices at last gained the Point in the Council of Worms the year after Nicholas his Death This Decree therefore Huldericus opposeth in a learned and passionate Epistle wherein he represents to the Pope that the Marriage of the Clergy is not only lawful in it self but ought necessarily to be permitted For that all cannot contain and that none ought to be necessitated to Incontinence That Marriage of the Cleâ—…gy was used in the Old Law left indifferent by Christ permitted by the Apostles countenanced by the ancient Canons of the Church and continued by the Council of Nice That the Imposition of Celibacy had produced in the Clergy the most enormous sorts of Lusts Incest Sodomy and the most exeerable Villanies That these Lusts were openly acted by those very Men who detested the chaste Marriage of the Clergy who when they could not contain themselves imposed it violently upon their Fellow-servants and were not ashamed to maintain that it is more honest to accompany with many Women in private than to be tied to one in the Face and View of Men. That nothing can be more unjust than when Christ saith He that is able to receive it let him receive it to oppose He that cannot receive it let him be Anathema That this is the Heresie which the Apostle of old foretold would arise in the later times speaking Lies in Hypocrisie and forbidding to marry That the Chastity which these Men so much pleaded for might no less be obtained in a married than in a single State and with less danger be preserved Here we may observe that the Champions of Celibacy in this Age had so far improved the antient Mistakes of the Impurity of Marriage that
the Clergy the use of Marriage appeareth from the Decretal of Pope Stephen cited by Gratian in these words The Tradition of the Eastern Churches is different from that of the holy Church of Rome For in them Priests Deacons and Subdeacons are joyned in Marriage Matrimonio copulantur i. e. enjoy the use of Marriage as Mendoza hath learnedly proved the meaning of those words to be But in this or the Western Churches none of the Clergy from a Subdeacon to a Bishop hath liberty to use Marriage Here the Pope expresly confesseth the use of Marriage by the Clergy to have been always the Tradition and Practice of the Eastern Church And if so it must have been also sometimes of the Western For being never practised in the East it could not be of Apostolical institution and therefore must have been introduced in the West by some subsequent Decree of the Church This was the state of Celibacy in the Christian Church for the first thousand years No-where imposed in the better and purer Ages of Christianity introduced into the Roman Patriarchate by a rash Pope commanded by many Provincial Councils of the West but in no place universally observed the imposition of it always disused and at last condemned in the Eastern Church and the practice of it in these latter Ages become obsolete in the West It will not now be amiss to look back a little and make some Observations upon the Authors and advance of Celibacy whereby we may the better judge how far the Authority and Example of those times ought herein to influence and direct the practice of the present Age. First then the Celibacy of the Clergy was hitherto esteemed by all a matter of meer Discipline first introduced for reasons of Decency Convenience and supposed Edification which have not only long since ceased but Celibacy is now become a Snare to the Clergy and a Scandal to the whole Church So that the obligation of the Laws of Celibacy even in those particular Churches where it was antiently introduced and commanded have long since ceased The pretence of Divine or Apostolical Institution was not heard of till the days of Hildebrand and is but faintly maintained in these times That the antient Imposers of Celibacy never thought of this pretence is evident because they never made that plea. This we before observed particularly of the Decrees of Siricius and Innocent and may be affirmed of all Popes and Councils which favoured or commanded Celibacy in those times Not to say that some Councils as the Quinisext II. of Toledo and others expresly acknowledge the permission of Marriage to the Clergy to be of Apostolical Institution II. The Example of the antient Church in this case is not only not conclusive but even of no authority it neither necessitates nor recommends Celibacy to the present Church For all the deference which we ow to the Authority and Example of these times proceeds from a probable supposition that the antient Church had greater and better opportunities of knowing the mind of Christ the intentions of the Apostles and the exigences of the Church than the present Age can pretend to as being more removed from the Fountains head and animated with a less vigorous and impartial zeal for the knowledge of Truth and increase of Piety But when this supposition becomes not only improbable but is evidently false when we are assured the practice of the antient Church was occasioned and introduced by prejudices and mistakes false notions of Piety and gross errours about the nature of things imitation would not only be not laudable but even foolish and perhaps unlawful lest the continuance of such a practice should uphold the errours which first produced it At least when these mistakes are discovered these prejudices removed the authority of this example will vanish with them That this was the case of Celibacy in the antient Church we have all along observed and proved and need not here repeat our Arguments III. If we should allow the usage of the antient Church â—…o be in all cases a Rule and Pattern to the present Age yet will Celibacy receive no advantage from it The Marriage of the Clergy may put in a larger and much better Plea of antiquity as being able to produce the practice of the Universal Church in the four first Ages of Christianity of the whole Eastern and many parts of the Western Church to this day and alledge the Suffrage of two General Councils the first and fourth which confirmed and allowed it Whereas the imposition of Celibacy was unknown to the first and better Ages not universally practised in the latter rejected by one and condemned by another General Council and never confirmed by other than Provincial Synods whose Acts may be annulled and Decrees abolished by the single authority of any particular Church And certainly if what most of our Adversaries pretend the tradition and practice of the present Universal Church be the only certain method of knowing the Opinion and Doctrine of all precedent Ages the lawfulness and convenience of the Clergies Marriage must have been the belief of the antient Church since all the Eastern Churches the greatest part of the Universal Church not to speak of the Reformed Churches in the West do at this day permit the use of Marriage to the Clergy and maintain the impositioâ—… of Celibacy to be unlawful Which also is no small prejudice to the cause of the Church of Rome if there be any truth or solidity in that grand Argument of our Adversaries that in the case of two dissenting Churches when the one openly condemneth the practice of the other and receiveth not the same severe Sentence from her Adversary Truth and Justice must necessarily ly on that side For however the Greek Church hath always condemned as impious and unjust the imposition of Celibacy in the Latin Church the Latines never dared to return the same Sentence upon the permission of Marriage to the Clergy in the Greek Church Rather the practice of the Eastern Church hath been allowed and ratified by the publick Authority of the Church of Rome For to omit the great Later an Council under Pope Innocent the Third wherein our Adversaries confess that permission of Marriage was continued to the Greek Priests thus Pope Nicolas the First answered to the Inquiry of the Bulgarians You ask whether you ought to maintain and honour a Priest having a Wife or to remove him from you To which we answer That although they be very blameable you ought not to cast them off And Bellarmine acknowledgeth that although the Roman Church approves not herein the practice of the Greek Church and judgeth it to be an abuse yet she permits it to the Greeks so that if they had no other errours a Peace might easily be accorded between the two Churches IV. The practice of the ancient Church in the imposition of Celibacy was various and divers and consequently neither Celibacy it self
can be of Apostolical Institution nor the antient practice of it be a fixed Rule to succeeding Ages The great variation of the Canons of those several Councils which enjoyned Celibacy we before observed and might add the alterations introduced into the practice of the Greek Church by the Quinisext Council and Novels of Leo the Emperour But I will here insist only upon the case of Subdeacons who in the present Church of Rome are no less forbidden the use of Marriage than the superiour Clergy Not to the antient Church Siricius and Innocent left Marriage free to them Pope Leo the First endeavoured to impose Celibacy upon them but his Decree gained no acceptance Many Councils after that time permitted Marriage to them Palagius the Second forbid it to the Subdeacons of Sicily but his Successour Gregory repealed that prohibition That Continence was not yet commanded to Subdeacons neither in Spain nor Sicily at the time of the third Council of Toledo Anno 589. Baronius and Binius affirm may be evidently deduced from the fifth Canon of that Council In England Augustin Archbishop of Canterbury had consulted Pope Gregory whether Clergy-men not being able to contain might marry and whether when married they ought to resume a secular Life Gregory returned answer that Clergy-men who were not in Holy Orders if they could not contain might marry and ought still to be maintained from the Revenues of the Church and be employed in sacred Functions By Clergy-men not in Holy Orders an antient Saxon Homily produced by Mr. Whelock understands all besides Deacons Priests and Bishops And even after the time of Hildebrand Pope Urban the Second in the Council of Beneventum prescribed Continence to Bishops Priests and Deacons but not to Subdeacons to whom the Fathers of the Council asfirm Celibacy was neither imposed by the Primitive Church nor commanded by the Apostles Lastly Gratian contends that neither Deacons nor Subdeacons ought to be restrained from contracting and using Marriage V. Whatsoever Popes and Councils in the antient Church forbid Marriage to the Clergy did at the same time forbid to them the company of Concubines with much greater and severer penalties Which doth not only demonstrate that they believed not the use of Marriage by the Clergy to be equal to the crime of Fornication but also takes away from the Church of Rome all just title to any plea of antiquity in the imposition of Celibacy since she hath sometimes openly permitted the use of Concubines to the Clergy and always in these latter Ages affixed greater punishments to the Marriage than to the Concubinacy of the Clergy And therefore the Gloss upon the Canon-Law observeth that Fornication is less disadvantageous to the Clergy than Marriage because in many cases Marriage would exclude a man from Orders or deprive him when ordained when a Fornicator might be admitted into and continued in the sacred Office. VI. The antient Church in imposing Celibacy upon the Clergy ever left open a Refuge for incontinent persons and thereby prevented the danger of their incontinence and scandal of the Church And not only those who could no longer contain but even all who desired Marriage were permitted to contract it by quitting the sacred Office and retiring to Lay-Communion maintained still by the Revenues of the Church and sometimes allowed to rank themselves among the three inferiour Orders Thus the Councils of Orleans I. of Tours and many others in the Western Church In the East no other punishment than deprivation was ever inflicted upon the superiour Clergy contracting Marriage So the Council of Neocaesarea and the Novels of Justinian the Emperour And even this punishment of total Deprivation Leo the Emperour thought too severe and therefore moderated it decreeing That Priests Deacons and Subdeacons contracting Marriage after Ordination should only be deposed from that degree wherein they were before their Marriage and be reduced to a lower Station among the Clergy using in the mean while the Habit of the Clergy and attending to the administration of holy things although acting in a lower Sphere And this Balsamon proposeth as the constant practice of the Greek Church in his time In the West however many Popes and Councils of the fifth sixth and seventh Ages commanded the Clergy contracting Marriage to be excommunicated and separated from their Wives these furious Decrees vanished and grew obsolete in the next Ages and Deprivation was thought a sufficient punishment of Marriage when Isidore Mercator forged the Decretals about the beginning of the ninth Age as appeareth from a spurious Decree of Pope Lucius cited by Gratian and from the Canons of the Councils of Worms and Mentz towards the end of this Age. I may add that no more than a temporary Deprivation seems then to have been sometimes used For the spurious Acts of the second Roman Council under Pope Silvester forged by the same Mercator decrees That no Presbyter shall contract Marriage from the day of his Ordination if he doth let him be deprived of his dignity for ten years Thus did the antient Church allow a Remedy to the Incontinence of the unmarried Clergy and perhaps cannot properly be said to have forbidden Marriage to any since none was by her Constitutions rendered incapable of Marriage nor totally debarred from it Not so the present Church of Rome which maintaineth Marriage contracted after Ordination to be in it self unlawful and no other than the sin of Fornication and Adultery nay much worse than both in the judgment of Cardinal Campegius who to the Embassadours of Strasbourg complaining of the open Concubinacy of their Clergy and desiring Marriage might be permitted to them as a Remedy of it answered That the Marriage of Priests was a much greater sin than if they kept many Concubines in their house For that these were perswaded they did well but the others both knew and confessed their sin And lest we should imagine this to be only the product of a rash and precipitate judgment Costerus the Jesuit proposeth and defendeth the same Proposition VII The scandalous and bad effects which too great an affectation much more the imposition of Celibacy produced in the antient Church might justly deter the present Age from imitating that Example and thereby continuing and augmenting the same scandals The horrible and sad abuses of Eunuchs and House-keepers we have before described whose ill examples have done greater injury and given deeper wounds to the honour and reputation of the antient Church than ever the affected or imposed Celibacy of the Clergy brought lustre or advantage to it And if in those times when the first zeal of Christianity was not yet expired when Piety and Vertue were excited by Miracles and fomented by Persecutions when a generous renunciation of the World and contempt of all Sublunary Pleasures was the common practice and seem'd to be the very genius of Christianity if under all these advantages Celibacy could not
make good its glorious pretences nor promote that for which it was at first intended true Virginity if then the voluntary practice of it betrayed the Church to open scandals and manifest inconveniencies in vain do we hope in this degenerate state of Christianity to attain a perfection which former and latter Ages wanted and introduce among the unmarried Clergy such an uniform exemplariness of Continence and Chastity as may promote among the Laity the great ends of Holiness and Purity and advance the true interests of the Church It may be a laudable ambition to surpass the Vertue of former times but little less than madness to attempt that which the Experience of so many Ages hath demonstrated to be impossible VIII If it be imprudent to imitate a practice from which naturally floweth so many Scandals and Abuses no less unsafe is it to place this imitation upon a matter which seems to have been the great Stumbling block of Antiquity and chief Fountain of her grossest Errours I mean Marriage about which the many false Opinions that obtained in the Church evince that most Christians had false notions of the nature and institution of it And here not to repeat what I before observed of the generally-supposed impurity and by some believed sinfulness of Marriage to omit the annulling and separation of Marriages contracted betwixt Christians and Infidels and the perpetual prohibition of Marriage to those who had done penance for Fornication to pass by the Decree of Pope Gregory the First of admitting no married man into the Church after he hath accompanied with his Wife till he hath washed himself with water and the permission given by Pope Gregory the Third to all of marrying a second Wife when the first although alive is disabled by sickness age or any accident from performing the Duties of Marriage and many other Decrees Practices and Opinions of the antient Church about Marriage which all sober Casuists will allow to be gross and pernicious Errours I will mention only a few extravagant Canons relating to the Marriage of the Clergy The 17th Apostolick Canon and third of the Quinisext Council command that none be admitted into the Clergy or if admitted that he be deposed who hath married two Wives after Baptism or one which hath been a Widow or a divorced woman or a Whore or a Servant or a Stage-player The Council of Auxerre in the year 578. forbid the Widows of a Priest Deacon or Subdeacon to marry after the death of their Husbands The second Council of Mascon in the year 585. extended the same prohibition to the Widows of Exorcists and Acolythi The Council of Bourges in the year 1031. decreed That the Sons of Priests Deacons and Subdeacons born after their Ordination should by no means be admitted into the Clergy Because such and all others who are not born of lawful Marriage are called a cursed Seed in holy Scripture The same Council farther commanded That none should give his Daughter in Marriage to a Priest Deacon or Subdeacon or to their Sons and in the next Canon forbid all to marry the Daughter of a Priest Deacon or Sub-Deacon or their Widows because that would be detestable Here Celibacy or a perpetual abstinence is enjoyned not only to the Clergy themselves but also to their Wives Sons and Daughters as if either all these must be supposed to have the gift of continence or it concerned the interest of the Church they should be necessitated to a single life Such unnecessary cautions about the Marriage of the Clergy and unlawful prohibition of it to their posterity could be no other than the effects of some gross mistakes or foolish superstition IX It is no small prejudice to the cause of Celibacy that all the great Patrons and Defenders of it could not themselves preserve that Virginity which they either admired or imposed They had not only suffered under but even yielded to the temptations of Incontinence and could never themselves obtain that perfection which they recommended to the practice of mankind In these men I will not say a satiety and glut of unlawful pleasures procured a contempt of lawful enjoyments but certainly an injudicious repentance and abhorrence of the former was prejudicial to a right esteem of the latter For when these persons many of whom afterwards were eminent for holiness reflected upon the greatness of their crime and their violation of the divine laws of chastity no wonder if in exaggerating the one and seeking to compensate the other they misplaced the guilt of their crime by removing it from the unlawful use of those pleasures to the very nature of them and then imagining no sacrifice too great to appease the divine anger endeavoured to promote and preserve that chastity in others which they had prostituted themselves and by restraining many from lawful pleasures expiate the guilt of their own unlawful enjoyments This is manifest from the example of all those who were the main Authors of urging and imposing Celibacy for the first 1100 years I mean Tertullian Eustathius Heliodorus Epiphanius St. Hierom Dunstan Hildebrand Lanfranc and Anselm to whom we may add the Founders of the four great Monastick Orders in the Church of Rome I begin with Tertullian who acknowledgeth that in his youth he had been guilty of all the debaucheries of the age and laboured under a total corruption of manners Eustathius was six times deposed by so many several Synods for his scandalous and enormous Vices Heliodorus was deprived of his Bishoprick by a Synod of Thessalia for writing a lascivious Romance Epiphanius inveighled in his youth by the artifices and Iusts of the Gnostick Women as himself confesseth St. Hierom acknowledgeth he had lost his Virginity although it was for many ages celebrated by the Roman Church in her publick Offices For thus he writes I extoll Virginity to the skies not because I possess it but because I the more admire that which I want It is an ingenuous and modest confession to commend that in others which your self want And in another place speaking of the danger of Incontinence to which youth is subject You know saith he the slippery path of youth in which I also fell Dunstan was by many vehemently suspected of Incontinency and the Adulterâ—…es of Hildebrand with the Countess Mathildis are insinuated by the Historians of that time Paul the 14th Abbot of St. Albans was generally supposed to be the base Son of Lanfranâ—… Anselm however celebrated by the Monkish Historians as an undoubted Virgin himself confesseth and deplores the loss of his Virginity For in an ancient Manuscript in the King's Library at St. James's are extant Twenty three Prayers of Anselm of which the Twelfth not to be found in the printed Collection of his Prayers among his Works is entitled A Lamentation of the Loss of his Virginity Therein at large he bewails his fault and confesseth his crime but more especially
should have his own Wife and expresly teacheth all have not the Gift of Continence That the Apostles advice of Virginity was temporary himself professing that he cast no snare upon us That as for themselves they professed they could not contain without the use of Marriage and therefore by the Precept of the Apostle had a right to marry That it was a vain and false pretence that this Indulgence was given by the Apostle only to the Laity and not to the clergy That the Yoak of Celibacy was unlawful and intolerable condemned of old by Dionysius Corinthius and Paphnutius Lay not therefore we beseech you this heavy burden upon us which we are not able to bear nor violate the Reverence due to Holy Orders and the sacred Mysteries for our sakes Certainly you render both contemptible in the sight of men whilst you forbid the Sacraments to be received from our hands A Prohibition directly contrary to the antient Canons which define that the Sacraments lose not their efficacy by the unworthiness of him that administers them By these Authorities and Reasons you ought to be perswaded and neither remove us from the sacred Office nor deprive the Laity of the benefit of the Sacraments Concluding with a protestation that they could not contain without Marriage nor obtain Continence any otherwise than by the peculiar Gift of God. Thus the married Clergy wanted neither learning nor courage to defend the justice of their Cause and however they were overborn by the violence of the Court of Rome and prevailing interest of the Monastick Order yet many of them retained their Wives for some Ages after the times of Hildebrand although from his Popedom the marriage of the Clergy gradually decreased and at last was born down by an universal Celibacy For some time after that the Priests of Germany publickly cohabited with their Wives saith Aventinus as other Christians did and begat Children as appears from the Records of Grants made by them to Churches Priests or Monks wherein their Wives by name subscribe as Witnesses together with their Husbands and are called by the honest name of Priestesses This constancy of the Clergy in retaining their Wives was the only reason of the frequent renovations of the Laws of Celibacy by the Popes and Councils of the 12th and 13th Ages These Laws seem not to have been introduced into Dalmatia till the year 1199. when a Council being held there by the Popes Legates this Canon was made Whereas the Priests of God ought to live continently they are said to hold both their Wives and Churches in the parts of Dalmatia and Dioclia Wherefore we enact That Clergy-men having Wives married before Ordination live with them and resign their Benefices but that those who have Wives married after Ordination dismiss their Wives and retain their Benefices To pass by other Councils I will produce only the great Lateran Council under Innocent the Third in the year 1215. which not only allowed the Marriage of the Clergy when contracted to be valid but also permitted Marriage to the Clergy of some Provinces wherein the Laws of Celibacy had not yet been received The first appeareth from the 31 Canon conceived in these words To abolish a great Corruption which hath been introduced in divers Churches we straightly forbid that the Sons of Prebendaries especially their Bastard Sons be made Prebendaries in the secular Churches wherein their Fathers were instituted Where by excluding especially the Bastard Sons of the Clergy it is acknowledged that their Children born in Marriage are not Bastards The latter is no less evident from the 14th Canon which enjoyning Continence to the Clergy adds this Proviso But whereas many of the Clergy according to the custom of their Countries have not renounced their Wives if any of these commit Fornication or Adultery let them be more severely punished because they can make use of lawful Marriage The latter Writers of the Church of Rome to â—…lude the Authority of a Council so much reverenced by them declaring in favour of the Clergies Marriage would have this clause understood of the Greek Clergy but produce not the least shew of Reason for their pretence No mention is made of the Greek Clergy either before or after nor did the Fathers of the Council in forming this Canon any more dream of them than of the Clergy of the Abyssine Church Lastly almost the whole 17th Title of the first Book of Decretals of Gregory the Ninth is made up of Epistles written by Alexander the Second to the Bishops of England about admitting or not admitting the Sons of Priests into the Benefices of their Fathers without any intermediate Successour In these Epistles Bastardy is no-where objected to the Sons of the Clergy but only the danger which may accrew to the Church if Ecclesiastical Benefices should descend like a Lay Inheritance from Father to Son. And this danger the Pope sometimes dispensed with For it is manifest from the 9th Chapter that he had given a Faculty to the Archbishop of York of inducting the Sons of the Clergy into the Benefices of their Fathers immediately after the death or cession of the latter The 12th Chapter hath these words Clement III. to the Archbishop of Cassels Whereas your Brotherhood inquired of us the Sons of Priests or Bishops may be promoted to Holy Orders if they be adorned with knowledge and sobriety know that if they be born of lawful Marriage and there be no other Canonical Impediment they may lawfully ascend to Holy Orders Where it is manifest that the Sons of which Pope Clement speaks were born after the Ordination of their Fathers for none was ever so mad as to doubt whether the Sons of Clergy-men born before their Ordination were capable of Holy Orders But if any scruple remains the 14th Chapter will remove it which is this We understand that N. begotten in Priesthood born and conceived of a lawful Wife desires to be admitted into Holy Orders Wherefore let it be done Thus did Popes General Councils and the practice of the Church after the times of Hildebrand acknowledge the lawfulness of the Clergies Marriage and connive at it till the Papal ambition drawing the disposition of all Ecclesiastical Preferments to themselves and allowing the use of Concubines to the Clergy Marriage was at last forced to yield to the more advantageous and easie way of Fornication It remains that we speak somewhat more particularly of the state of Celibacy in the Church of England which more peculiarly concerns us and probably the last of all the Churches in the West submitted to the imposition of it The Church of England being no part of the Roman Patriarchate nor intervening by her Bishops in those Western Councils which enjoyned Celibacy took no notice of nor gave any obedience to the Decrees of Popes or Constitutions of Councils in that matter but allowed an uninterrupted freedom of Marriage to the whole body of her
Clergy till the end of the tenth Age and to the far greater part of them till the beginning of the twelfth Age. Elfric indeed a great Zealot of the Monastick Order in which he was brought up disliked and opposed the Marriage of the Clergy yet so that from his words it is manifest the Marriage of the Clergy generally obtained in England and himself rather wished than hoped for an abolition of it In opposing it he joyned the prejudices of Antiquity to the impostures of latter Ages From hence he received the poor pretence of the prohibition of Marriage to the Clergy by the Council of Nice in the third Canon from thence his detestation of second Marriages against which he had conceived such unreasonable prejudice that he forbid Priests to be present at the solemnities of those Marriages or even to bestow a blessing on them Nay the Clergy of the Church of England enjoyed at that time so great a liberty of Marriage that even the Monks enjoyed the same freedom and as the old Manuscript Chronicle of Winchester relateth all the Monasteries of England except Glastenbary and Abendon were nothing else but Colledges of married Priests till King Edgar drove them thence and planted Monks in them This was done by King Edgar about the year 974 at the instigation and by the artifices of Dunstan who held divers Synods for that purpose and had sharp disputes with the married Clergy possessing the Monasteries where his frequent recurring to tricks and impostures related by the Monkish Historians under the name of Miracles manifest that Reason and Justice failed him and that in both he was overpowered by the married Clergy But the favour of the Prince gave to Dunstan the advantage of obtaining his design who as Malmsbury relateth when he gave the Clergy their choice either to quit their Wives or their Monasteries forsook their Places and left them empty to the Monks Alferus indeed Prince of Mercia drove out the Monks again and replaced the married Clergy but they soon lost their recovered possession with the fall of that Prince However this Violence of Edgar and Constitutions of Dunstan touched not the Secular Clergy whether Parochial Priests or Prebendaries of Cathedral and Collegiate Churches They yet enjoyed the use of Marriage with no less perfect freedom than before And therefore among King Edgar's Canons one is that if a Mass-Priest commits Fornication or violate his Marriage he fast 10 years and always bewail his crime if a Deacon 7 years if an inferiour Clergyman 6 years if a Layman 5 years Not only the Secular Clergy but even many Regulars who lived separately out of Monasteries enjoyed then the benefit of Marriage as many Nuns do at this day in the Abyssine Church whence Sir Henry Spelman observeth that their Wives are frequently called Monachae and Moniales Nuns Afterwards Pope Gregory the Seventh imposing Celibacy upon the whole Clergy and seconding his imposition with reiteratâ—…d commands to all Bishops to execute his Decrees Lanfranc Archbishop of Canterbury endeavoured to introduce Celibacy into the Church of England But perceiving the attempt to be impossible by reason of the constant and unanimous opposition of the Clergy he was contented in the Council of Winchester in the year 1076. to make this Decree only Let no Prebendary have a Wife But of the Priests who live in Towns and Villages those who have Wives shall not be compelled to put them away those who have not shall be forbidden to marry any Thus Lanfranc prepared the way for the more resolute undertakings of his successour Anselm who not contented with a partial Celibacy attempted to debar the whole body of the Clergy from the use of Marriage which they had hitherto enjoyed So common and general was the Marriage of the Clergy in the Church of England at that time that Pope Paschal the Second in an Epistle to Anselm giving him a Dispensation to admit the Sons of the Clergy into Holy Orders assigns this reason of it because there is so great a number of this kind in the Kingdom of England that they make up the greater and better part of the Clergy And indeed many great and illustrious Members of the Clergy the sons of Priests who lived at this time in England may be produced out of History Herebertus Losinga Bishop of Norwich was the son of Robert Losinga a Clergyman afterwards Abbot of Winchester Rithmarch was son and successour of Sulgheim Bishop of St. Davids Thomas Archbishop of York was the son of a Norman Priest as also his brother Samson Bishop of Worcester whose son Thomas succeeded his Uncle in the Archbishoprick of York Henry Archdeacon of Huntington the Historian was the son of Nicolas Priest of Lincoln who for his great Piety and Learning was called The Star of the Clergy Richard Archdeacon of Coventry was the son and successour of Robert Bishop of Chester or of Coventry and Lichfield which See was then placed at Chester upon which Radulphus de Diceto maketh this observation Not therefore either from Sacred Orders or from Parochial Cures or from Bishopricks or from the Popedom it self are the Sons of the Clergy to be debarred if they be of an honest life It cannot be here imagined that all these persons were born before the ordination of their Fathers For first Clergymen were then ordained young and then the contrary can be plainly demonstrated of many of them For Eadmerus relates that Lanfranc going to Rome in the year 1071. impleaded Thomas Archbishop of York and Remigius Bishop of Lincoln before the Pope that neither of them were canonically promoted to their Bishopricks because they were the sons of Priests and consequently made incapable of Holy Orders by the Canons Which incapacity was never extended to the sons of the Clergy born before their ordination Besides the learned Selden observes there was no such express Canon then made nor ever heard of before the Council of Clermont in the year 1095. and therefore the incapacity of the sons of the Clergy to Holy Orders could arise only from their supposed bastardy being the fruits of the use of Marriage after ordination which the Hildebrandine Popes and Councils had defined to be fornication This was the state of the Clergies Marriage in the Church of England till the times of Anselm who being educated in a Monastery and a dependant of the Court of Rome endeavoured to introduce the Papal Laws of Celibacy into England His attempts of this kind I will represent in the words of our Historians Henry de Knyghton saith Anselm forbid Wives to the Clergy at Leicester in the year 1102. which before were not forbidden to them Simon Dunelmensis In the year 1102. Concubines or Wives were forbidden to Priests in the Synod of London Whence many of them shut up the doors of their Churches omitting all Divine Service Henry Huntindon In the year
1102. Anselm forbid Wives to the Priests Which seemed most chast to some to others dangerous lest while they affected a purity beyond their power they should fall into horrible uncleanness to the great scandal of the Christian Religion Mattheâ—… Paris repeateth very near the same words The same prohibition was renewed by Anselm in a Synod in the year 1108. In the year 1125. John Cardinal of Crema was sent into England by the Pope upon the same design who holding a Synod at London perswaded the Clergy in a set speech to dismiss their Wives and live continently but he being caught that very night in the act of fornication was dismissed with shame In the year 1129. a great Council was held at London to use Matthew Paris and Bromton's words wherein Concubines or Wives were forbidden to the Clergy and the exeâ—…ution of the whâ—…le matter left to King Henry Which thing ended afterwards with great disgrace For the King took an infinite Sum of Money of the Priests to redeem their Wives Then the Bishops repented of the power granted by them to the King when it was too late Thus the King by selling Licences to the married Clergy defeated all the Decrees of these Synods The same had William Rufus before done in respect of the married Prebendaâ—…ies after the prohibition of Lanfranc Which made the Author of the Saxon History of Peterborough say of these Councils of Anselm and others against the Marriage of the Clergy All these Councils availed nothing 〈◊〉 the Clergy by the favour of the King enjoy yet their Wives as they did before This may be further confirmed from the frequent repetion of this prohition in subsequent Synods which would have been unneâ—…essary if the Decreâ—…s of former Councils had been receiv'd â—…nd observ'd In the year 1138. the Decree of Pope Gregory was renewed in the Synod of London In the year 1175. it was â—…nacted in the Council of Westminster that whosoever in the degree of Subdeacon and upwards contracted Marriage should leave their Wives although unwilling and refusing And indeed Anselm himself in an Epistle to Ernulphus complains that notwithstanding his frequent prohâ—…bitions the King still suffered the Clergy to enjoy their Wives as freely as they did in his Father and Lanfranc's times The Clergy yet retained the use of Marriage for some Ages in the Church of England although not with so much freedom nor in so great number as before the times of Anselm In the Appendix to the Third Council of Lateran in the year 1179. may be found many Epistles of Alexander the Third to the Bishops of England from which it appeareth that an infinite number of the Clergy then in England had Wives and even married them after ordination And the Pope himself doth in some measure allow their Marriage by decreeing that if 〈◊〉 contract Marriage if they were before such persons as it might be feared lest instead of one they should abuse many women their Marriage should be dissembled and their Coâ—…abitation with their Wives connived at because a less evil is to be tolerated that a greater may be avoided Which reason will equally agree to all Orders of the Clergy In the beginning of the Thirteenth Age Innocent the Third writ to the Bishop of Norwich that he understood many Clegymen of his Diocess contracted Marriage and retained their Benefices The Synod of London in the year 1237. complains that many Clergymen privately contracted Marriage and retained their Wives Three years after the Synod of Worcester commands the Archdeacons to inquire after married Priests Towards the end of the Age John Peacham Archbishop of Canterbury published a Constitution that the sons of the Clergy should not succeed immediately to their Fathers in their Benefices which must be understood of the legiâ—…imate sons of the Clergy For Bastards were ever forbidden to succeed either mediately or immediately and indeed to be received into Holy Orders In a word Mr. Fox undeniably demonstrates from ancient Deeds Evidences and Records wherein Estates are given setled or intâ—…iled upon Clergymen and their Wives and Heirs lawfully begotten of their Wives or wherein they together with their Wives sell Estats â—… that the use of Marriage was yet retained by the Clergy of England in the middle of thâ—… 14th Age. We might perhaps carry yet much farther the continuance of the Marriage of the Clergy in the Western Church and that not only to the Reformation but even to this day For many of the more sober Clergy of the Church of Rome finding they could not contâ—…in without the use of Marriage and the Church permitting to them or conniving at the use of Concubines have under colour of keeping Concubines secretly married wives and thereby both satisfied their own consciences and avoided the censures of the Church Or if they either could not or dared not â—…se the Ceremonies of the Church in their contract of Marriage yet at least they obliged themselves and pledged their faith to their Conâ—…ubincs never to forsake them and always to be true to their Bed receiving the same assurance from them By this reciprocal Promise a true and perfect Marriage is formed in the sight of God although the publick Ceremonies of the Church do not intervene So St. Augustin Ifidote and Gratian plainly determine and therefore such Concubines are expresly allowed by the first Council of Toledo in the year 400. and Justinian and were permitted to Christians till forbidden by Eeo the Philosopher Now that both these cases of Marriage were continued down in the Church of Rome we are assured by Alvarus Pelagius who complained to Pope John XXII that many Priests and other persons in holy Orders especially in Spain Asturia Gallieia and other places publickly and sometimes by publick Writing promised and swore to Women chiefly those who were well descended that they would never put them away and gave them Joyntâ—…res of the Goods and Possessions of the Church and sometimes publickly married them in presence of their Kindred and Friends with a solemn Banquet as if they were their lawful Wives About the year 1240. Otho the Pope's Legate coming into England published his Constitutions for the Government of this Church Among them one is particularly directed against the 〈◊〉 Marriage of the Clergy After the Reformation Cassander relateth that all the best and most religious Priests perceiving their infirmity and â—…etesting the fouâ—…ess of Formeation If they dare not publickly at least privately enter into Marriage Thus we find Marriage yet retained by the better and more religious part of the Roman Clergy But then what shall we say of that Church which so far alloweth Concubinacy that for the sake of it she connives at the violation of her so much admired Celibacy and to whom a chaâ—…e Marriage of the Clergy can recommend it self under no other name than that of
is so far from surpassing conjugal Chastity that even the guilt of no crime ever brought greater disgrace to the Holy Order greater damage to Religion or greater grief to all good men than the stain of the Clergies Lust. Wherefore it would perhaps be the interest as well of Christianity as of the Holy Order that at last the Right of publick Marriage were restored to the Clergy which they might rather chastly pursue without Infamy than defile themselves by such brutal Lusts. Erasmus hath the like words If any consider the state of these times how great a part of Mankind the multitudes of Monks take up how great a part the Colledges of Priests and Clergy-men and then consider how few out of so great a number truly preserve Chastity of Life with how great scandal most of them are openly incestuous and incontinent into what kinds of Lusts innumerable of them degenerate he will perhaps conclude it to be more convenient that those who do not contain may have the freedom of publick Marriage which they may purely and chastly without infamy maintain rather than that they should commit unhappy and shameful Lusts. The World hath now many unmarried men but few chast although neither is he chast who useth not the company of a woman because it is forbidden But I very much fear that the Revenues of the Church makes more Clergy-men at this day Eunuchs than Piety doth while we are afraid lest our Possessions should be intercepted by Wife and Children or at least nothing added to them by married Clergy Cassander saith That if ever there was a time to change any old Custom certainly these times seem to require some alteration of this however antient Custom Lastly all Princes and States before the Council of Trent in their Petitions and Remonstrances for Reformation of the Church never omitted to require the permission of Marriage to be restored to the Clergy In the time of the Council and after the conclusion of it Ferdiand II. and Maximilian II. the Emperours Sigismund Augustus King of Poland Albertus Duke of Bavaria and other Princes earnestly desired the same thing by their Embassadours But that Council too well knew the interests of the Church of Rome to grant a Petition of that nature Rather by defining that Marriage contracted after a Vow of Continence is neither lawful nor valid they have perhaps put the case beyond all remedy and taken from the Church all possibility of ever restoring Marriage to the Clergy For if Marriage after a Vow be in it self unlawful the greatest Authority upon Earth cannot dispense with it nor permit Marriage to the Clergy who have already vowed Continence If in the precedent Discourse I have said any thing injurious to the honour of true Virginity I here retract it and profess that a great veneration is due to that state of life when a matter of choice not of force and that both in the entrance into it and continuance of it when undertaken for the increase of Piety and advancement of divine Glory not for any secular ends and advantages when taken up by those who have the Gift of Continence not affected by such as cannot contain We believe there is somewhat in those words of our Saviour He that is able to receive it let him receive it And with Clemens Alexandrinus We reverence the happiness of the Gift of Continence in those to whom it is bestowed by God we admire Monogamy and the decency of one Marriage yet assert that we ought to indulge with and bear the burdens of others lest he who thinks he standeth firmly should fall We dislike not the Virginity of the Romish Clergy but slight the pretence and condemn the imposition of it Experience demonstrates the one to be false and Reason the other to be unlawful We affect not the name but the purity of Virginity and while we impose Celibacy upon none nor deny Marriage to any we promote a voluntary Continence in many and secure a real Chastity in all of the Clergy FINIS (a) In 4. Disp. 2â—… Qu. 2. (b) de contin sacerd c. 4. (c) de dogmatic charact l. 2. (d) Sess. 24. Can. 9. (a) Controv. Tmo Il. l. 1. 18 19. (b) 1 Cor. 7. 25. (c) Tit. 1. 1. (a) In Ioc. (b) Strom. l. 3. (c) Act. 24. 25. (d) Ver. 6. (e) Ver. 23. (f) Ver. 35. (g) Ver. 5. (a) Ver. 20. (b) Ver. 27. (c) Ver. 37. (d) Ver. 8 9. (e) Ver. 26. (f) Ver. 28 29. (g) Ver. 32. (a) Copula sacerdotalis nec legali nec eâ—…angelica vel apostolica auihoritate prohibeâ—…ur ecclesiastica â—…amen lege peniâ—…us interdicitur Caus. 26. qu. 2. c. 1. (b) Ecclesia post aposâ—…olica consâ—…ituta quaedam consilia perfectionis addidit utpote de continentia ministrorum Caus. 35. qu. 1. in fin (c) Constituo sacerdotum caelibatum non esse juris divini aut quoquam modo ab Apostolis prâ—…ceptum sed tantum consâ—…ltum Si nulla lex aut nulla essent vota monastica liceret sacerdotibus aut monachis nubeâ—…e Concil Tom. XIV p. 1551. (a) 1 Tim. 3. 2 4. (b) Tit. 1. 6. (c) 1 Tim. 3. 12. (d) 1 Cor. 2. 2. (a) Tim. 3. 2. (b) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lib. 6. cap. 17. (c) Hom. X. in 1 Ep. ad Tim. Hom. II. in Ep. ad Tit. (d) Ep. 83. ad Oceanum comm in Ioc. l. 1. adv Jovin (a) Comm. in 1 Ep. ad Tim. cap. 3. (b) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Loc. c. 14. (a) Hom. 2. in Ep. ad Tit. (b) Comm. in Ep. ad Tit. c. 1. Tom. IX p. 245 (c) Ep. 83. ad Oceanum in init (d) 1 Tim. 5. 9. (a) In actu vero conjugii negari non potest quin admixta sit quaedam impuritas pollutio non quae peccatum sit sed quae ex peccato tamen nata sit Controv. Tom. II. lib. 1. cap. 19. (a) Heb. 13. 4. (b) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Socrat l. 1. c. 11. (c) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Strom. l. 3. (d) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ibid. (e) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ibid. (f) Sed sicut faeraina castitatis vinculis obligata est ne aliud concupiscat ita vir eadem legetenetur quo quia Deus viro uxorem unius corporis compage solidavit Epitome cap. 8. (a) Sunt ergo virginitatis praemia sunt merita viduitatis est etiam conjugali pudicitiae locus Epist 82. ad Vercell (b) Qui unius uxoris virum 〈◊〉 esse non quo exortem excludat conjugii nam hoc supra legem praecepti est sed ut conjugali castimonia servet ablutionis suae gratiam Ibid. ante Med. (a) Gen. 1. 28. (b) Exod 19. 15. (c) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mat. Hom. 56. in fine (a) Strom. l. 3. p. 446. (b) Adv. Jovin l. 1. in sin (c) Vid. Clâ—…m Alex. Strâ—…m l. 2. p. 421. (a) 1 Cor. 7. 32. (a) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Strom. l. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Alex.
void and that because of the danger of Incontinency to which the other party is thereby exposed Wherefore Gregry I. commanded the Husband of Agathosa who had entred into a Monastery without her consent to be taken thence although Professed and be forced to live with her But if the danger of another's Damnation produced by a Vow of Contitinence can dissolve the Obligation of it certainly much more will the danger of any one 's own Damnation produce the same effect Thirdly If it be true what Salas the Jesuite teacheth That a Fryar Profess'd of any approved Order who shall have a probability of Divine Revelation that God dispenseth with his Vow to enable him to Marry may Marry and make use of this probable though doubtful Dispensation certainly he who after Continency Vowed in the taking of Orders shall find himself assaulted with any grievous temptations of Incontinence may make use of the same remedy having more than a probable even a plain and undoubted Revelation of the Lawfulness of it in those words Nevertheless to avoid fornication let every man have his own wife and it is better to marry than to burn So that in many cases it is Lawful in some Necessary to break this Vow Thirdly Whether Lawfully or Unlawfully Necessarily or Unnecessarily violated if a Marriage be Contracted after a Vow of Continence it is firm and valid as any other and cannot be rescinded For Marriage is a thing of Natural and Divine Right whose continuance when once Contracted is commanded by the Laws of God and first Principles of Reason whereas Vows of Continence are but of human Instituion as we have proved or at the most but of Evangelical Counsel as all our Adversaries confess and therefore must in all cases give place to a matter of Natural Right and Divine Preeept Bellarmine acknowledgeth this and affirms it to be the constant Opinion of all Catholicks that a simple Vow hinders the Contracting of Marriage but dissolveth it not when Contracted altho' a solemn Vow he would perswade us doth But since the difference between a Solemn and a Simple Vow consists meerly in an External Act in pronouncing outwardly with words what the Mind inwardly resolves This distinction is wholly vain For that External Act addeth nothing Essential to the Vow and although a Solemn Vow only can subject any Man to the Censures of the Church and Punishment of the State yet a Simple Vow doth equally oblige in Conscience so that all the use that can be made of such a distinction is this that such a Contract is not valid in the present Canon or Civil-Law although it be a true Marriage in the Eyes of God which is sufficient for our purpose and will make the annulling of it to be unlawful in the Sight of God although lawful in Human Judicatures However the contrary of this was the only thing which the Council of Trent adventured to define in the Cause of Celibacy most unhappy in their Choice for that in all the dependent Questions of Vows Marriage and Celibacy there is none more apparently false nor any one opposed by so constant and uninterrupted a Tradition from the Apostles Times to the Days of Hildebrand when such Marriages were first declared to be null and void if we except two or three obscure or inconsiderable Councils about the Year D. CCCC All the Fathers before that time who treat of this Matter not one excepted allow their validity and even after that time all the more Famous Divines and Canonists till the Council of Trent Some Provincial Councils indeed after the Year D. ordered those who had Contracted such Marriages to be separated from each other but that was not for any invalidity which they supposed to be in those Marriages but in way of Penance to expiate the guilt of the Violation of their Vows and the Scandal given to the Church as may appear from all those Canons which Bellarmine alledgeth in Defence of the Decree of Trent Sometimes also a Separation of such Married Persons was commanded or rather permitted only thereby to enable the Man to be re-admitted into the Ministry As for the Council of Chalcedon commanding all who Contract Marriage after a Vow of Continence to be Excommunicated produced by Bellarmine who might have added many such like Canons of other Councils They rather prove the validity of these Marriages because contented to inflict the Punishment of Excommunication they proceed not to a Dissolution of them especially since the Council of Chalcedon in the close of that Canon leaveth to every Bishop a Power of Remitting even that Punishment But that Excommunication doth not suppose the invalidity of these Marriages evidently appears from the Canons of all those many Councils as Aurelianense II. Can. 19. Arvernense Can. 6. Toletanum IV. Can. 63. Nicaenum Can. Arab. 53. Arelatense I. Can. 11. which Excommunicated those Christians which Married Jews or Gentiles although none will deny those Marriages to have been perfectly valid and further ordered the Married Persons to be separated which also proves that a Sentence of Separation doth not simply imply the invalidity of any Marriage To manifest then the constant Tradition of the Church to have been contrary to the Definition of the Council of Trent I might produce a long Bead-roll of Councils Popes and Emperours who in the their Canons Decrees and Laws have inflicted upon the Clergy who Married after a Vow of Continence no other punishment than that of Degradation and some no more than an Incapacity of rising to higher Dignities in the Church All these by permitting the use of such Marriages must necessarily be supposed to have owned the validity of them But because their Authority however certain yet is indirect I will content myself with those who if not in terminis yet at least directly assert the validity of these Marriages I begin then with St. Paul who giveth these Instructions to Timothy concerning the Deaconnesses of the Church Let not a widdow be taken into the number under threescore years old But the younger widdows refuse for when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ they will marry Having damnation in the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is too severely translated because they have cast off their first faith I will therefore that these marry These Deaconnesses were Women chosen out of the Widdows to attend the Service of the Church who maintained with the Revenues of the Church were with some peculiar Ceremonies set apart and as it were Ordained to that Office whom decency and the Custom of the Church permitted not to Marry again because thereby they must have quitted their Offices and so defeated the end of their solemn Dedication to the Church or as the Apostle termeth have cast off their first faith In taking upon them therefore this Office they obliged themselves not to Marry again and therefore as to a Vow of Continence were in the same condition with