*

clergy should be left at liberty, as they had always been. Eustathius was anathematized by the Council of Gangra, because he taught that men ought to separate from those priests who retained the wives whom they had married while they were laymen.† The Council of Ancyra permitted deacons to marry after ordination; and in St. Jerome's days there were Bishops who would not ordain any unmarried

man.

Jerome states this with horror§ in a

* Bellarmine is so perplexed by this inconvenient story, that he can find no better means of evading its force than by chusing to disbelieve it. In this he has been followed by Valesius in his notes upon this historian. A writer of the same communion, but of a different spirit, observes upon this.." Quelquesuns doutent de la vérité de cette histoire. Je crois qu'ils le font plûtôt dans la crainte qu'ils ont, que ce fait ne donne quelque atteinte à la discipline d'à présent, que parce qu'ils en aient quelque preuve solide.”—Du Pin, t. ii. 318. Ed. 1690.-Bingham, ut supra.

† Bingham, i. 5. § 8.

Ibid.

§ "Pro nefas, episcopos sui sceleris dicitur habere consortes: si tamen episcopi nominandi sunt, qui non ordinant diaconos nisi prius uxores duxerint, nulli cælibi credentes pudicitiam: immo ostendentes quod sanctè vivant qui malè de omnibus suspicantur : et nisi pregnantes uxores viderint clericorum, infantesque de ulnis matrum tagientes, Christi sacramenta non tribuunt."-Tractatus in Vigilantium.

Before the Reformation, it was the custom in many of the Swiss Cantons, that whensoever they received a new Pastor, they obliged him to take a concubine, for the sake of preserv

Treatise, where he appears as little to advantage for wisdom as for wit and command of temper: but we learn from that Treatise that in the fifth century a testimony was borne against this demoralizing prohibition, against the worship of Saints and relics, and against offering prayers for the dead; and your Jerome (for Jerome of Prague is ours) is one of the witnesses by whom we prove that the corruptions of the Romish Church were opposed step by step in their progress; and that in every age there were some who in the spirit of truth protested against them.

That the apostolical doctrine has been preserved throughout all ages, even when that which calls itself the Universal and Apostolical Church was most corrupted, is a point rather of curiosity than of importance. The question "Where was our religion before Luther?" is best answered as Sir Henry Wotton† answered it; "it was to be found then where yours is not to be found now, in the written word of God.”‡ This reply, which is as irrefragable as that word

ing the honour of their own families.-Sleidan. Comment. lib. iii. quoted by Henry Wharton. Preservative against Popery, vol. i. 337.

* Allix's Remarks on the Albigenses, p. 22. 24.

Izaak Walton's Life of Wottou.

The question was propounded playfully by a friendly priest, to whom even in that age, and at Rome, such a reply might be

itself, might suffice, even if the apostolical succession were not matter of history as far as history extends, (which it has been proved to be,) and of the highest probability when no direct proof can be adduced, because the records fail. It would not be difficult to establish a point of more importance, that as the Romish Church incorporated many of the ceremonies and superstitions of heathen idolatry, so it adopted from the old heresies, which it anathematized and subdued, such opinions as were conformable to its own views, and amalgamated them with its own corruptions. These errors usually became more malignant in their new type. Thus the Pelagian doctrine concerning the efficacy of good works, led to the most flagrant absurdities when it was engrafted upon monkery; and finally produced a received opinion in the Romish Church, analogous to the Hindoo tenet, that acts of devotion have in themselves an inherent and positive value in no degree dependent upon the motive which prompts them, or the mood in which they are performed. But even the fabricators of the Brahminical fables did not deduce from this such monstrous doctrines as the Romanists,

made safely. I forget who it was that answered the same question as pithily, but more bluntly, by asking in reply, "Where was your face before it was washed?"

who inferred that such works were transferable by gift or purchase, and succeeded in persuading the rich that their property might be converted into post-obits for their own benefit, payable to themselves in the other world! Thus too the celibacy of the clergy was a part of the Manichean system; and the preposterous notions which produced what may truly be called bella plusquam civilia between the Saints and their own bodies, are traceable to the same

source.

Before celibacy was enjoined to the clergy, but when it was extolled as a virtue in them, and considered as one means for obtaining the respect of a people not yet weaned from the prejudices of their Pagan faith, there were priests who devised a curious mode of exercising and manifesting their gift of continence. They cohabited with women who had taken a vow of perpetual chastity,† and received them as their companions, to bed and board, under the most solemn professions that nothing but what was pure and holy passed between them in this intercourse. But although sundry Saints obtained their reputation for sanctity by living * Beausobre, t. ii. 483-486.

+ Mosheim, ii. 218. Henry Wharton's Treatise on the Celibacy of the Clergy, in the Preservative against Popery, vol. i. p. 308.

Venema, iv. § 178. p. 191.

upon these terms with their wives, the Bishops did not rely upon such professions, and succeeded at length, with the aid of the civil power, after many efforts, in abolishing this impudent practice.

*

Such a custom indeed was not more reprehensible in itself than it was inconsistent with that fear and jealousy of all intercourse with females which the Romish Church inculcates upon its clergy. By the African canons no Clergyman, not even a Bishop, might visit the widows and virgins, unless with proper companions, who were to be present during the interview. There is an English canon which enacts that when the priest hears a woman confess, it should always be in a situation where they might be seen.† And even with this precaution it has been enjoined that the woman should place herself beside him, and not in front, in order that he might hear her, but not see her face, becaue the prophet Habakkuk §

* Canones Ecc. Africanæ, p. 118.

+ Lyndwood, p. 342.

Partidas, part i. tit. iv. l. xxvi.

§ An English Protestant need not be told that the Prophet Habakkuk is speaking, not of women, but of the Chaldeans, who were to execute a fearful vengeance upon the Jews. It is thus, however, that he is quoted, not only in the text of the Partidas, but by no less a person than Hostiensis !