first Created whereas had he prescribed a perpetual Continence to all those who aim an Perfection as is pretended without altering their Natures at the same time and by an extraordinary Miracle enduing all who desire it with the Gift of Continence This alone would have debased the excellency of his Religion and have been an Imposition more grievous and burthensom more difficult and intolerable than all the Rites and Ceremonies of the Mosaick Law. And then in respect of us it became the Wisdom and Goodness of our Supreme Law-giver to give us a Religion not as to Angels or Spiritual Beings but in a way most consentaneous to our Natures and and agreeing to our Imperfections That can neither refine nor perfect our Nature which is Preternatural and if in this Mortal State while enchained in a Body surrounded with frailties and endued with passions we affect the impassibility of Angels and the perfection of Spirits we may be called Ambitious but I know not whether Pious But this is not all The Apostle not only forbids not but even expresly permitteth Marriage to the Clergy For laying down the necessary Qualification of a Bishop the highest and most perfect Degree of the Clergy he proposeth this as as one that he be blameless the husband of one wife One that ruleth well his own house having his children in subjection with all gravity Of a Priest that he be blameless the husband of one wife having faithful children Of a Deacon that he be the husband of one wife ruling his children and his own house well And further looketh upon it as no small mark and testimony of the ability and worthiness of the Candidates of any of these Sacred Offices if they have ruled their own Houses well and by their precepts and examples taught their Wives and Children the practices of all Vertues And in another place to avoid Fornication allows to every Man his own Wife maketh no exceptions That is a lamentable refuge of some who seek to elude the force of the former places by pretending that the Apostle means here by the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he who hath been the Husband of one Wife but is not now being become a Widdower or at least unable for the exercises of the Bed. For besides that the Apostle giveth Rules for the vertuous Carriage of Deacons Wives besides that this Interpretation is uncertain which is sufficient to our purpose that it is contrary to the sence of all Mankind and the Vulgar acceptation of the word Husband that it seemeth repugnant to the following Precept of ruling their Houses well and is certainly repugnant to the Explication of the Fathers The Practice of the Ancient Church do manifestly evince the falseness of it wherein it cannot be denied many Persons were admitted to Sacred Orders who had Wives then alive and dwelling with them And in the Apostolical Constitutions the Apostles are introduced thus speaking We have ordered that a Bishop Priest and Deacon be the Husband of one Wife whether their Wives be alive or whether they be dead To pass by therefore this unreasonable Interpretation there are three other Explications of this word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all of them back'd with great Reasons and Authorities First That the Apostle means no more thereby than that the Persons admitted into Holy Orders should not have two wives at the same time Secondly That he should not have successively two Wives much less three or four one after the death of another Thirdly That he should not have two Wives living at the same time one Married after the Divorce of another The first Interpretation was generally followed by the Greek the second by the Latine Fathers although St. Chrysostom espouseth both and St. Hierom in so many several places admits all three Which of them be the truest is of no great moment to the present business since each of them destroy the Opinion of our Adversaries and leave to the Clergy a liberty of Marriage However because the second Interpretation if admitted may in some measure prejudice that Principle which we shall hereafter lay down that all cannot contain and that God and Nature hath provided no other remedy for incontinent Persons than Marriage which consequently must be reiterated as often as necessity shall require I shall say somewhat to it and oppose first the contrary Opinion of all the Greek Fathers Secondly the Authority of the whole Catholick Church who admitted Bigamist Bishops and Priests or those who had married one Wife after the death of another and that in great numbers as we shall hereafter occasionally demonstrate so that if the Apostle had forbidden all such to be admitted into these Sacred Offices the Universal Church had erred in a matter of the greatest moment Thirdly the third Interpretation seems far more consonant to Reason the Analogy of the Scripture and the Circumstances of those Times For that ought not to exclude any Man from this Sacred Dignity which is so far from being a Crime that in many cases it becomes Necessary and if Marriage be allowed to all Men to avoid Fornication if any Man's Wife dieth before either his years or the peculiar favour of God hath reprieved him from the temptations of Incontinence that Man although a Priest or Bishop may withouthe least injury to the strictest Rules of Piety or Religion contract a second Marriage Bigamy in him as Theodoret invincibly argues will become involuntary and conseqnently not derogate from his character either of Priest or Christian. Besides it was an abuse very frequent in that Age both among the Jews and Gentiles to Divorce their Wives upon the slightest occasions or the least discontent an abuse which argued in all an inconstant and unjust and in many a lustful Mind and therefore although committed before their Conversion rendred such Persons unworthy of this Sacred Character This Interpretation therefore is embraced by Theodoret who after he had affirmed the same Opinion to be maintained by many Others and asserted it by many Reasons concludeth thus They seem to me to be in the right who hold that the Apostle here teacheth him to be worthy of Episcopal Ordination who liveth chastly with one only Wife For he hath not herein rejected second Marriages which he hath in many cases even commanded to be contracted Considering then these and such like Arguments I receive the Interpretation of these Writers St. Chrysostom also in one place explains it the same way And St. Hierom when freed from the passion of Disputing against Jovinian enclined to the same Opinion For proposing the Examples of two Bishops whereof the one shall have lost his Wife in his youth and overcome by the necessity of the flesh shall marry another bury her after some time and ever after contain the other shall enjoy the company of but one Wife even till his death He determineth the former to be the better more chaste and
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
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
unreasonably Jealous of her for which being rebuked by the Apostles that he might purge himself of all Suspicion of Jealousie he brought his Wife into the midst of the Company and giving up his Right to her gave free leave to any one to marry her not that he intended any such thing but only to shew by that Bravado how far he was from Jealousie This indeed was a rash and imprudent Act which gave neither Example nor just Occasion to those execrable things which afterwards the Nicolaites practised and some credulous Persons believed to have been committed by Nicolas whom Clemens affirms to have been truly Chaste and have used the company of none but his own Wife by whom he had one Son and several Daughters all Persons of Exemplary Vertue and Modesty Eusebius St. Augustine and Theodoret relate the Story the same way Only Epiphanius relates in a different manner That Nicolas having vowed perpetual Abstinence from his Wife was allured by the Charms of her Beauty to return to her Embraces and violate his Vow and afterwards not only became unreasonably Jealous but fell into all kind of Uncleanness and founded the Heresie of the Nicolaites This Relation Epiphanius seems to have received from the impure Gnosticks with whom he conversed in his Youth and as he was a Person infinitely credulous and of weak judgment blindly to have followed it However his Authority in a matter of this nature is of no moment when opposed to Clemens and Eusebius judicious and more ancient Writers From the Apostolick Times I proceed to the Doctrine and Practice of succeeding Ages till the Council of Nice Of the two first Ages few Monuments of the Church are now extant and in them not the least foot-step of Celibacy imposed or generally used by the Clergy to be sound Rather Clemens Alex. assures us that Every Christian in his time might as himself pleased either chose or omit Marriage That all none excepted had power to make use of that Marriage which the Gospel permitted them first Marriage where he plainly speaks of the Clergy for second Marriage was never forbidden to the Laity But the following words are more remarkable The Apostle very well approveth the Husband of one Wife although he be a Priest or a Deacon or a Lay-man if he useth his Marriage unblameably for he shall be saved by Procreation of Children And what will the Condemners of Marriage say to these Precepts since the Apostle commandeth him to preside over the Church in quality of Bishop who governeth his own House well and the Marriage of one Wife representeth the Church of Christ. Indeed about the Year 170. Pinytus Bishop of Gnossus in Creete had under pretence of a greater Perfection and Purity endeavoured to impose Celibacy upon his Clergy Which when Dionysius the Famous Bishop of Corinth heard he writ an Epistle to him representing the injustice of his attempt and persuading him not to impose so heavy a burthen as Necessity of Continence upon the Brethren but to have regard to the infirmity of many That by the Brethren in this place only the Clergy are meant appears evidently from the Character which Eusebius gives of Pinytus That he was a Pious and Orthodox Person Whereas had he imposed Celibacy upon all the Faithful he had been guilty of a gross and most erroneous Heresie To this I might add the Confession of the most Learned Mendoza and many others if so clear a Matter wanted any further Illustration That Pinytus yielded to the Admonition of Dionysius and quitted his attempt we are assured by Russinus who saith That Pinytus writing back to him embraced the Opinion of his better counsel In the Third Age Origen plainly insinuates That First Marriage was in his Time indifferently permitted to the Clergy Not only Fornication saith he but also Second Marriage excludeth from Ecclesiastical Dignities For neither a Bishop nor Priest nor Deacon nor Deaconness can be Digamists Himself indeed was agreat Admirer of Celibacy but that we shall speak to hereafter Of the Practice of the Church in these Three first Ages not a few Examples may be produced For to pass by the Apostles and Deacons already mentioned St. Polycarp professeth himself to be very sorry for Valens Presbyter of Philippi and his Wife That Tertullian Presbyter of Carthage was married all ackowledge that he abstained from his Wife after his entrance into Holy Orders is a meer Fiction of the Papists which however contemned by some Reformed Divines may be refuted by Tertullian's own words For in his Two Books directed to her to perswade her to continue a Widow after his death or if through the infirmity of the Flesh we cannot do that yet at least to marry none but a Christian he hath these words Why should we not love the Perfection of Continence as much as we are able As soon as it offers itself let us embrace it that what we are not now able to do whilest Married we may perform in Widowhood That occasion ought to be laid hold of which depriveth us of those Pleasures that Necessity before commanded A little before Tertullian's time Irenaeus relates how Marcus the Haeresiarch being entertained by a Catholick Deacon in Asia who had a handsom Wife debauched her both in Body and Mind and ran away with her In the Decian Persecution Chaeremon Bishop of Nile in Egypt fled into the Mountains of Arabia a together with the Companion of his life or as Valesius truly translates it With his Wife Among the Articles of Misdemeanour whereof St. Cyprian accuseth Novatus Presbyter of Carthage and Author of the Novatian Schism in Africk one is that he kick'd his Wife great with Child and caused her to Miscarry That St. Cyprian himself was married and lived with his Wife after the the receiving of Holy Orders we may learn from Pontius his Deacon who speaking of his eminent Vertues and extraordinary Piety whilst yet Presbyter saith That neither Want nor Sorrow could discourage him neither the Persuasions of his Wife nor the Sufferings of his own Body could divert him from neglecting the care of his estate to attend the Exercises of his Religion Caecilius Presbyter of Carthage who had converted St. Cyprian to the Christian Faith at his death recommended his Wife and Children to his Care and Protection Caldonius in an Epistle to St. Cyprian reckons Faelix a Presbyter and Victorin his Wife among the Confessors of Africa In the Dioclesian Persecution Phileas the most Holy Bishop of Thmuis in Egypt and Philoromus being brought before the Heathen Judge to receive Sentence of Martyrdom were desired by him to take Pity if not of themselves yet at least of their Wives and Children and prevent the Ruin of their Families by sacrisicing to Idols although those brave Martyrs slighted his Admonitions and scorned such ignoble Considerations However Celibacy and the Merits of
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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