seem to accuse Marriage as if he thought the lawful pleasures of it to be impious The same saith Zonaras upon this Canon This was also the occasion of the like Precept in the Apostolick Constitutions a Work of the same Age and Authority with the Canons where the Apostles are introduced thus speaking He which maketh a Vow of Virginity which we leave to every ones choice only advise that it be not done rashly and lightly let him demonstrate his profession to be sincere and undertaken for a better opportunity of Piety not for dislike of Marriage The same Precept may be found in the interpolated Epistle of St. Ignatius to the Philadelphinas But what clears the Matter beyond all doubt is that when the Council of Nice rejected the motion of those who proposed a total Celibacy of the Clergy and upon the persuasions of Paphnutius permitted to them the use of Wives married before Ordination they formed a Decree to that purpose in the very words of this Apostolick Canon That the Clergy ought not every one to put away his Wife In the beginning of the Fourth Age Celibacy received great Advances from the increase of Errours and Prejudices taken up in the former Age and the length and a sharpness of the last Prosecution begun by Dioclesian and continued by Maximus and Licinius which infused melancholy thoughts into all Christians and an unusual reverence for all shews of Austerity and Mortification Then was Marriage first forbidden to Priests and Bishops after Ordination by a judiciary Act of the Church but that formed in a Provincial and inconsiderable Council whose Canons were never taken notice of or ratified by any subsequent Councils or even Popes till the midst of the Ninth Age I mean the Council of Neocasarea which in the year 314. made this Canon If a Presbyter marry let him be deposed from his Order but if he commit Fornication or Adultery let him be cast out of the Church and put to Penance Where it may be observed 1. That this Canon forbids not the use of Wives married before Ordination 2. That it forbids not to Deacons and Subdeacons to contract Marriage even after Ordination 3. That it manifestly distinguisheth between Fornication and Marriage after Ordination 4. That it doth not command a Separation from Wives so Married but only a dimission of the holy Office. However the pretentions of Celibacy received no small check from the Council of Ancyra held the same year A Council of far greater Esteem and Authority which was ratified and confirmed by many subsequent Councils and Popes particularly by Leo the First and whose Canons were received into the antient Code of Canons in the Primitive Church The Fathers of this Council considering the inconveniencies of forced Celibacy and right which all men have to Marriage Decreed That if Deacons yet unmarried protested of the time of their Ordination their intentions and necessity of Marrying as not being able to continue Unmarried they might Marry after their Ordination and continue in their Office. But if they made no such Protestation of their Ordination and afterwards Married they should relinquish their Office. The pretentions of Baronius and Binius that in both Cases Deacons Marrying after their Ordination were obliged to lay down their Office deserveth not to be considered since nothing could be invented more directly contrary to the plain words of the Canon It is more considerable that Aristenus extends this Canon also to Presbyters reading it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and affirms that by vertue of it both Presbyters and Deacons were always allowed Marriage in the Greek Church after Ordination if they had not neglected to make their Ptotestation till this Permission was repealed by the Quinisext Council in the year 692. That this Canon took place in the Western Church appears not particularly except from the universal approbation of the Acts of this Ancyran Council although somewhat like it was enacted in the Eleventh Council of Toledo in the year 531. To which we may add what Sir H. Spelman relates in the British Councils that Restitutus Bishop of London returning from the Council of Arles in the year 314. brought with him into England the Canons of that Council amongst which one was this very Canon of the Council of Ancyra Indeed no such Canon is now found in the Acts of the Council of Arles published by Sirmond but then we are to remember that these Acts are not intire and perhaps not genuin The Decree of Ancyra was indeed favourable to the Marriage of the Clergy but the restless Importunities and scandalous Practices of the Sectatours of Celibacy obliged the Church to proceed yet farther and declare it self more openly in favour of their Marriage For Eustathius Bishop of Sebastea in Armenia and first Founder of a Monastick Life in Armenia and Cappadocia had formed a new but then plausible Heresie that Holy Things and the Sacraments of the Church ought not to be Administred by the married Clergy and that the People ought not to communicate from their hands With this Doctrine he had drawn great numbers into Schism and created no small disturbance in the Church Upon which account the Council of Gangra met about the year 324. who condemning this Hercsie and deposing the Author of it published this following Canon If any one separates from a married Priest as if it were unlawful to communicate when he officiates let him be Anathema A Canon the more considerable for the Authority of the Council which made it For this was ever most reputed of all particular Councils in the antient Church confirmed by many general Councils and Popes and recieved into the antient Code of Canons This was the Progress and Condition of Celibacy in the Eastern Church before the Council of Nice In the West if we except perhaps that of Arles for the Roman Synods under Pope Sylvester are confessedly spurious no Councils had determined any thing in it but that of Eliberis in the year 305. which ordained that Bishops Priests and Deacons and all the Clergy placed in the Ministry or while they Minister should abstain from their Wiues and not attend to procreation If any doth let him be deposed from the Order of the Clergy Here to pass by the Opinion of those mentioned by Albas Pinaeâ—…s who expounded the words of this Canon in their Grammatical Sense for the Latin runs thus We absolutely forbid the Clergy to abstain from their Wives in which case it will be coincident with the Fifth Apostolick Canon our Adversaries maintain that it is to be understood of a total abstinence of the Clergy from their Wives If we should grant this it would not much prejudice our Cause since this was that foolish Council which forbids Candles to be lighted in Church-yards in the day time least the Souls of the dead Saints should be disquieted a Council of so little Reputation that it never was
confirmed by any Pope or Council to this day But I doubt not to evince that this Canon is to be thus understood only of a temporary abstinence of the Clergy while they performed their Office in their turns For the Clergy had not then as now each one his Parish assigned him wherein to officiate but all of one City at least in the lesser Cities belonging to one Church supplied the necessities of the Church in Order and relieved one the other by turns That this Canon is to be thus understood appeareth 1. From the plain words of it where Positis in ministerio must either signifie this or be wholly impertinent since all the Clergy by the very nature of their Office are placed in the Ministry of the Church 2. Otherwise total Abstinence will be enjoyned to Subdeacons Readers Exorcists and Acolythi as well as to Bishops Priests and Deacons and so Albaspinaeus explains the words in totum prohiberi it is forbidden saith he to all Clergy-men whatsoever Whereas Subdeacons were never forbidden the use of Marriage till the middle of the Fifth Age and the three inferiour Orders are not at this day forbidden it in the Church of Rome 3. When a total Abstinence of Bishops Priests and Deacons was proposed in the Council of Nice all the Historians of that Council express it by saying some endeavoured to introduce 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a new and unheard of Law and Paphnutius opposing it pleaded that the Church ought not to be burdened with new Impositions but that the universal Tradition and practice of it was to be preserved Now if this total Abstinence had twenty years before been imposed by the Council of Eliberis all those Historians had mistaken and Hosius Bishop of Corduba who had been present in the Council of Eliberis and presided in that of Nice would not have suffered the Fathers to be led away with the false representations of Paphnutius Celibacy was not yet arrived at its Crisis universally indeed applauded but no where imposed yet had the unreasonable affection of it in many Clergy-men and an immoderate Ambition of the honour of Virginity in many Lay Persons already introduced two of the most enormous Scandals that ever the Church laboured under from the Apostles to this day I mean Emasculation and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 These 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were unmarried Women commonly those who had vowed perpetual Virginity taken into the house as Domestick Assistants by Clergy-men who had either never married or buried their Wives or unmarried Men commonly of the Clergy taken into the House in the same Quality by Women or Virgins who had vowed Continence We want a proper English word to express them and therefore must be content to call them House-keepers they were called by the Greeks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but most commonly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which name was first given by the people of Antioch to the House-keepers of Paulus Samosatenus their Bishop and his Clergy by the Latins they were termed Subintroductae Adscititiae Extraneae Alienae Dilectae Sorores Commanentes and Focariae They were taken in by most under pretence of Piety to encourage and assist one another by Spiritual Conference and Exhortations but by all upon pretence of Domestick Assistance that the Men might defend the Women from all injuries to which otherwise that weak Sex is exposed and the Women might provide Necessaries for the Men and take care of their Families Some perhaps made good their Pretences by a sober and prudent Conversation but the greatest part indulged to themselves the most inward Familiarities of Man and Wife and made them even the Companions of their sleep where they used all the Embraces Caresses and Allurements of the Nuptial Bed save only Carnal Knowledge And all this they openly maintained to be lawful and thought it not injurious to their Profession of Virginity and the integrity of their Chastity But some proceeded farther and by visible effects discovered the Approaches of a nearer Familiarity and more â—…lose Embraces to their own Shame and the great Scandal of the Church Others finding or fearing they should not be able to contain in the midst of so great Temptations For can a Man take Fire into his Bosom and not be burnt as the Fathers frequently applied to this Case emasculated themselves that they might at least prevent all visible Scandal when they could not extinguish the Fire of their Minds Thus did Leontius the Arian Bishop of Antioch for the love of Eustolium his Paramour and that the abuse was frequent even among the Catholicks appears from all the Writers of those times especially the Author of the Book De singularitate Clericorum and St. Basil's Treatise of true Virginity where he eloquently describes and bewails the scandalous familiarity of these Eunuchs and House-keepers See two egregious Scandals the immediate effects even of a voluntary Celibacy in the antient Church greater than any which the Church now suffers in the dregs of time We needed not say any more of them if the unreasonable wills of our Adversaries did not necessitate us to clear the Matter a little farther They maintain that by these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were meant also the Wives of the Clergy a pretence which however shameless and foolish was the main Engine of advancing Celibacy in the latter Age when the Authority of all those Councils which had forbidden House-keepers to the Clergy was produced against their Marriage and the ignorance of those Ages had sitted them for a miserable Delusion by such Impostures To pass by then the Confession of some learned Writers of the Church of Rome and the constant practice of the Eastern Church which always forbids House-keepers but never Wives to the Clergy I will only oppose a few Passages of the Antient Writers St. Cyprian lamenting the folly of many consecrated Virgins who had entred into the Families and even into the Beds of unmarried Clergy-men saith Lastly how grievous falls of many do we see hereby produced and with extreme grief behold the corruption of many Virgins by these unlawful and dangerous familiarities Wherefore if they desire the reward of Virginity let them be Virgins in good earnest but if they will not or cannot contain let them Marry The Author of the Book De Singularitate Clericorum hath these words Why hath he taken a House-keeper who scorned to marry a Wife So he who despised the Bond of Marriage and yet retains the familiarity of Women although he be not actually polluted yet enjoy them by Imagination Sight Conversation and Society St. Gregory Nazianzen professeth he knows not whether to call them married or unmarried Persons since in an unmarried State they performed the Duties of Marriage St. Chrysostom in like manner saith They are neither Wives nor Concubines but a middle kind unknown to former Ages and thus bespeaks them If you desire to have Men
dwell with you you ought not to have chosen Virginity but to have married For it had been much better so to have married than thus to profess Virginity For such a marrige neither God condemns nor Man blames for 't is an honourable State injurious to none scandalous to none But this Virginity performed in the company of Men is accused by all Men as worse than open Fornication Lastly thus St. Hierom describes them I am ashamed to speak it it is sad but true Whence did this plague of House-keepers enter into the Church Whence without Marriage another name for Wives yea whence this new kind of Concubines I will say more whence these Whores tied to the oompany of one Man They lodge in the same House in one Chamber and oft-times in one Bed and yet they call us unreasonably suspicious if we think any thing amiss Such then were these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 first introduced in the middle of the Third Age and notwithstanding the frequent Prohibitions of Councils and Declimations of Fathers continued in the Church but with greatest Scandal about the Year 400. till at last they degenerated into open Concubines in the Church of Rome in which state the Reformation found them generally then thought Lawful or at least a venial Sin although none since hath dared to defend them They were forbidden in the Ancient Church by the Councils of Eliberis Ancyra Nice the First and Third of Carthage the Third of Constantinople the Second of Nice Aquisgran and many others and by the Emperor Justinian in his Novels As for Emasculation that was severely forbidden by the Apostolick Canons and the Council of Nice and seems to have been dis-used before the Year 500. Upon occasion of these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it will not be here inconvenient to speak somewhat of the Book de Singularitate Clericorum which we just now cited This Book however in its Title it may seem to oppose the Marriage of the Clergy is one of the most pregnant Evidences of the Use of it in the Ancient Church that is now extant It is by some ascribed to Origen by others to St. Augustin but by most to St. Cyprian However all Learned Men now agree that it belongs to none of them The late Learned Editors of St. Cyprian's Works at Oxford conjecture it to have been written about the time of Bede Rather it was most certainly written before the middle of the Fifth Age because the Author of it makes use of the old Italick Version which was in use in the Latin Church before St. Hierom's Translation Most probably therefore it was writ in the Fourth Age. The scope of it is to decry and reform the abuse of House-keepers which as the Author saith was then become so scandalous in the Church that the unmarried Clergy could not endure to sleep without the company of a Woman If in the heat of Disputation he lets fall any thing injurious to Marriage it is such as opposeth no less the Marriage of the Laity than of the Clergy and indeed the former part of the Treatise is nothing else but a Satyr against Women But the design of the Author and the lawfulness and use of the Clergies Marriage in his time may be evidently collected from many places I will produce one or two of them premising this Observation that the Author ranks those Women also among the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who lived in the House with married Clergymen if they had no Relation of Kindred or Marriage to them That the company of near Relations was never denied to the Clergy since proximity of Blood and the dictates of Nature sufficiently secured their Honour and that all other Women but Relations and Wives are by this Author termed Alienae and Extraneae Strange Women If then saith he the Clergy instead of putting away their Wives so fondly adhere to Strange Women What would they do if they were commanded to put away their Wives and Children Or how will they be able to renounce their Kindred for Christ who preferr to the Commands of Christ Women endeared to them by no other Obligations And in another place I affectionately entreat you O Clergymen if any of you hath a Mother a Daughter a Sister a Wife or a Kinswoman living with you ye so save her that no Waiting-maid live with them nor any other Strange Woman have access lest you be suspected to retain your Relations with you for this only reason that ye may under that Pretence take Strange Women into your houses If they cannot want the service or assistance of Maids or the company of Friends of their own Sex it is better that they should remove into another house than that ye should entertain Strange Women for their sakes For as it would be unfit that a Clergyman should deprive them of the necessary assistance of their Sex so it is indecent that they should injure his Reputation by bringing suspicious Women into his company To which may be added the Testimony before cited wherein the Author upbraids to those Clergymen who could not live without House-keepers theâ—… 〈◊〉 to marry Wives We are now come to the great and Famous Council of Nice wherein the Cause of Celibacy was debated and decided I will represent the whole matter in the words of Socrates the Historian c It seemed good to some Bishops to introduce a new Law into the Church That the Clergy I mean Bishops Priests and Deacons should not lay with their Wives which they had married being yet Lay-men And when the thing was proposed to he consulted of Paphnutius standing up in the midst of the Assembly of the Bishops contended vehemently that so heavy a Yoke ought not to be imposed upon the Clergy saying that even Marriage was undefiled or chaste and the Use of it honourable that they should take heed of rather injuring the Church by this excess of Severity For that all could not contain neither perhaps could the chastity of every one's Wife be preserved or as Sozomen expresseth it For that it was a thing very hard to be borne and would perhaps be the cause of Incontinence both to themselves and to their Wives But he asserted the company of a lawful Wife to be Chastity that it was sufficient that he who was first Ordained should not Marry after it according to the Ancient Discipline of the Church but that none ought to be separated from that Wife which he had before married while he was yet a Lay-man And this he said being himself unmarried and brought up from his Youth in a Monastick and Ascetick Life The whole Council yielded to the Arguments of Paphnutius and therefore ceased any farther Debate leaving it to the will of every one whether they would abstain from the company of their Wives or not Sozomen and Nicephorus relate it almost in the same words Suidas in the
very same Cassidiorus in the like words and so do Ivo Carnotensis Gratian and Blastares and who is ancienter than them all except the two first Gelasius Cyzicenus who transcribed the Acts of that Council out of a Copy which had belonged to Dalmatius Bishop of Cycicum who was present in the Ephesine Council in the Year 431. So that they who doubt of the Truth of this History may with equal reason deny the Existence of the Nicene Council since both are attested with the same Authorities Yet is this done by many Writers of the Church of Rome particularly Barronius Bellarmine and especially Turrian whose trifling Arguments the Learned Mâ—…ndosa relates and confutes More general and notorious hath been the fraud of the Church of Rome in pretending that the Third Canon of this Council made against the House-Keepers was directed against their Marriage Of this Imposture the Popes and Councils of the Eleventh Age made great use never failing to back their Decrees with the Authority of the Council of Nice The Canon is conceived in these words The Great Synod hath wholly forbidden to all Bishops Priests Deacons and all the Clergy to have a House-keeper unless she be a Mother or a Sister or an Aunt or those Persons only who are liable to no Suspicion That wives are not hereby forbidden to the Clergy would be impertinent to demonstrate if the unreasonableness of our Adversaries did not require it First then The Authority of all the Historians last mentioned prove this For if the Council had by this Canon forbid Wives to the Clergy the Advice of Paphnutius would not have been followed but rejected Secondly We before proved that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were a sort of Women far different from Wives who were never ranked in the number of them Thirdly The constant Practice of the Greek Church demonstrates it which ever allowed to the Clergy the society of their Wives from the Council of Nice to this day Fourthly Otherwise Marriage would have been forbidden to the Inferiour Orders also contrary to the Practice of the Universal Church in all Ages For the Canon after mention of Bishops Priests and Deacons subjoyns 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Prohibition to every one of the Clergy Fifthly The Emperor Theodosius Junior repeating and re-inforcing this very Canon after a Permission of the Cohabitation of Mothers Sisters or Aunts with the Clergy in the very words of the Canons subjoyns Those also chase love requireth not to be forsaken which were lawfully married before the Ordination of their Husbands For they are not unfittingly joyned to Clergymen who by their discreet Conversation made their Husbands worthy of the Priesthood And Balsamon thus Comments upon this Canon d Read the Canon of the Nicene Synod which forbid House-keepers to be retained By House-keepers the Canon which is the Third of that Synod meaneth Women taken into the houses of unmarried Clergymen and dwelling with them Lastly to omit the Confession of other Learned Romanists Mendoza not only granteth but proveth that in this Canon House-keepers were forbidden only to those Clergymen who never had married Wives or had lost them by death The Determination of the Council of Nice settled the Matter and put an end to the Controversie about Celibacy in the Eastern Church Thence forward is a profound Silence in the Acts of the Eastern Synods concerning the Marriage or Celibacy of the Clergy till the Quiniext Council in the Year 692. where Bishops were forbidden the Use of Marriage which till then was permitted to them as well as to the inferiour Clergy Of that Council we shall speak more largely hereafter In the mean while the general Custom which obtained in the Eastern Church of permitting to the Clergy the Use of Marriage contracted before but not after Ordination received some little variation Three several ways which deserve to be next observed First then A total abstinence of the Clergy from their Wives was introduced into the Province of Thessaly by Heliodorus Bishop of Trica under the Reign of Arcadius in the end of the Fourth or beginning of the Fifth Age. So that the Clergy accompanying with their Wives after Ordination were deposed The same Custom obtained in the Provinces of Thessalonica Achaia and Macedonia in the time of Socrates in the middle of the Fifth Age but in no other Part of the Eastern Church as he obesrveth How long this Custom continued in any of these Provinces is uncertain Secondly Towards the end of the Fourth Age it became very usual for Bishops both in the Eastern and Western Church when they were assumed to that Dignity publickly to Vow perpetual Abstinence from their Wives This they did voluntarily not necessitated to it by any Law as Socrates observeth that they might raise to themselves the greater Reputation of Holiness among the People and equal the supposed Continence of unmarried Bishops In this case it was not permitted to them to return to the embraces of their Wives If they did the Fact was esteemed Scandalous and sometimes punished with the Censures of the Church Thus among the Seven Heads of Accusation for which Antoninus Bishop of Ephesus was deposed by St. Chrysostome in a Synod in the Year 400. one was That after he had vowed Abstinence from his Wife he accompanied with her again and had Children by her Thus Urbicus Bishop of Clermont in France about the same time vowing Continence at his Consecration and afterwards begetting a Daughter of his Wife did voluntary Penance for it For this reason also Macliau Bishop of Vannes was Excomunicated by the Bishops of Bretagne for that having when persecuted by his Brother Chanao Prince of Bretagne fled to Vannes and there disguising himself professed Chastity and afterwards made Bishop he had upon the Death of his Brother resumed his Wife together with the Principality Thirdly which is most considerable A Custom was afterwards introduced in the Eastern Church whereby It was lawful to use the words of Blastares for Priests any time within Ten years to be reckoned from their Ordination to marry lawful Wives This Custom continued till the end of the Ninth Age when it was repealed by Leo the Emperor from whose Constitution it appears that this Custom was then become Universal although that instead of Ten years reads Two years In the Western Church the cause of Celibacy lay dormant till the end of the Fifth Age neither countenanced nor opposed by any publick Constitutions of the Church However in the mean while it gained infinite Veneration in the minds of Men and thereby made way for a publick Imposition of it This was attempted by Pope Siricius in the Year 385. a simple Pope as St. Hierome A Man of inconsiderate Zeal as Sacchinus the Jesuite calls him He in an Epistle to Himerius Bishop of Tarragon in Spain dated this Year after a long Harrangue against the Clergies Use
the effects of enforced Celibacy And the Council of Metz in the same year upon the same Account The next year Riculfus Bishop of Soissons published his Constitutions wherein he not only renewed the Canon of these Two last Councils but also forbid the Clergy to talk with VVomen in private or even speak to them without some VVitness standing by These were the Progresses and Gradations of Celibacy in the VVestern Church from the Council of Nice to the times of Hildebrand Proposed it was by some Doctors of great Authority enforced by Popes and enjoyned by Councils yet could not all these Authorities effectually recommend to the Practice of the Clergy a Doctrine so contrary to the first Notions of Reason and common Inclinations of Mankind The frequent and continual Repetition and renewing of Decrees and Canons to the establishment of it argue the universal Opposition which it met with in the World every later Decree manifesting that the former was unsuccessful And indeed most of these Constitutions are ushered in with a Preface of the Obstinacy of the Clergy in retaining their VVives against the express Prohibitions of the Church All the aforementioned Councils were Provincial and Popes had not yet claimed the Government of the whole Church So that all these Decrees affected not the Eastern Church at all nor those Parts even of the VVestern Church which were neither subject to the Roman Patriarchat nor the Jurisdiction of the particular Councils And even in those Churches which were then subject to either of them the Laws of Celibacy were never universally receiv'd and obeyed and at last so far neglected and grown obsolete that in the beginning of the Eleventh Age Marriage of the Clergy was as freely used and as generally practised in most parts of the VVestern Church as it is at this day in the Reformed Churches This I come next to prove where I might justly have omitted to speak of the Eastern Church if our Adversaries did not pretend an universal Practice of Celibacy in the Eastern as well as Western Church till the time of the Quinisext Council The Refutation of this Pretence will necessitate us to speak in general of the Practice and Discipline of the antient universal Church in the â—…ase of Celibacy And first to take away all Prejudice which may possess the Reader that it is impossible at least improbable that a Custom persuaded by many Doctors commanded by Popes and Councils successively in several Ages and which divers of the Fathers affirm to have been universally practised in their time should never be generally used by the Clergy I will produce an Example of a matter of Discipline of far less moment which was urged and enjoyned with greater Advantages and Authorities and the universal Practice of it attested by more VVriters which yet after all never generally obtained in the Church and was indeed disused in all Ages I mean the case of Bigamists who by an early custom of the Church begun before the end of the Second Century were excluded from the Clergy This Exclusion is commanded by the Apostolick Canons by the Apostolick Constitutions by St. Basil's Canonical Epistle to Amphilochius by the Councils of Valence Agatha Fourth of Arles Third of Constantinople of Rome under Pope Hilarus of Aquisgran and infinite others by the Popes Siricius Innocent Leo Gelasius and Gregory Tertullian saith The Ordination of Bigamists is forbidden by Apostolical Tradition and the Discipline of the Church Origen affirmeth that in his time Bishops Priests and Deacons could not be Bigamists St. Ambrose asserts this Prohibition to have been confirmed by the Council of Nice Pope Innocent saith No question ought to be made of it it being manifestly of Divine Institution Pope Leo That this Precept was ever held sacred and that nâ—…ither Law nor Gospel will permit such to be admitted into the Clergy Epiphanius In truth the holy Command of God after the coming of Christ receives not into the Clergy those who after the death of their first Wife contract a second Marriage St. Hierom A Bigamist cannot be chosen into the Clergy and A Layman is not chosen into the Clergy if he be a Bigamist St. Augustin It is not lawful to ordain any but the Husbands of one Wife Hilary the Deacon No Bigamist is ordained And by all the same Authorities he who hath kept a Concubine is made uncapable of the Clergy After so many and so great Authorities the common Tradition of both Churches Command of General Councils and Belief of Divine Institution all which Advantages the Celibacy of the Clergy wanted who can imagin any otherwise than that this point of Discipline was â—…niversally received and practised without exception or limitation yet nothing less Textullian objects this to the Catholicks as a main argument of his Separation and Departure to the Montanists that they admitted Bigamists even to the Episcopal Dignity Among you saith he how many Bigamists preside And when Theodoret ordained Count Irenaeus a Bigamist then in Disfavour at Court Bishop of Tyre and his Enemies laid hold of that pretence to accuse him of the Violation of the Canons he defends himself by the Authority of all the Bishops of Phoenicia who gave their Suffrage to the Ordination by the Example and Tradition of his Predecessours by the Examples of Alexander Patriarch of Antioch and Praylius of Hierusalem who had ordained Bishops Diogenes and Domninus both Digamists that he followed herein custom and famous Men celebrated for their Knowledge and Piety and that Proclus Patriarch of Constantinople the Metropolitans of Pontus and all the Bishops of Palestine had not only allowed but also commended this Ordination and not the least doubt made of the lawfulness of it Lastly St. Augustin was ordained Bishop of Hippo by the common Consent of all the Bishops of Africa who had far exceeded the supposed Scandal of Digamy by an open Cohabitation of two Concubines successively And which deserved the first place St. Hierom answering the doubt of Oceanus whether Carterius a Digamist were Canonically ordained Bishop saith I wonder you produced the example of no more than one whenas the whole World is full of these Ordinations I speak not of Priests nor of the inferiour Orders I come to Bishops whom if I should name singly so great a number would arise that the multitude of the Synod of Ariminum the most numerous Council which had been then held would be exceeded That the Laws of Celibacy were no less disobeyed and all the antient Testimonies of the universal Practice of it are no less wide mistakes I come next to prove and will begin with the Eastern Church St. Athanasius not long after the Council of Nice writing to Dracontius a Holy Monk rebukes him for declining the Episcopal Office and refutes the Reasons of his Refusal the chief of which
was That in the Episcopal Dignity he could not live so retiredly as he desired but must be forced to lead a secular kind of Life In answer to this Athanasius shews him that as to that nothing can be performed in the one State which may not in the other and that when a Bishop he may as well use the retiredness of a Monk as many Monks do the usual Freedom of a Bishop and produceth this Instance For many Bishops have not marriâ—…d at all and many Monks have been Fathers of Children As we have known Bishops Fathers of Children and Monks having no Posterity For both are alike lawful to each Order neither the one nor the other is forbidden to them A more express Passage than this cannot be conceived where he affirms many Bishops to have gotten Children after their Consecration and by the Instance insinuates That this was very usual with the Bishops of that time That this Procreation of Children was performed by them while Bishops not before is most evident since otherwise the Instance of Athanasius would have been highly impertinent For Dracontius in declining the Episcopal Dignity did not dread the Life of Bishops before they were made Bishops that being the State wherein himself then was and desired to continue but the supposed incumbrances of a Bishop's Life after he was made Bishop In the year 357. the Emperor Constantius made a Law That all Clergymen should enjoy this Priviledge that their Wives and Children and Servants of both Sexes and their Children also that is the whole Family of Clergymen should be always exempt Tribute and all publick Burdens There are three or four other Laws in the Theodosian Code made in favour of the Wives and Children of the Clergy which it is not here necessary to repeat About the year 375. some Superstitious Christians had conceived so great a Veneration of Celibacy that they despised the Married Clergy and would rather defer Baptism for many years together than be baptized by Bishops and Priests who abstained not from their Wives These St. Gregory Nazianzen sharply rebukes Say not saith he a Bishop shall baptize me or if a Presbyter at least one of those who are unmarried and one of those that profess Continence and thereby imitate the Life of Angels Hence it is manifest that many Presbyters abstained not from their Wives for this was the occasion of those foolish Christians Scrupilosity supposing some impurity to be in the use of Marriage Had the married Priests renounced the company of their Wives they had been no less continent than the unmarried ones And therefore it was not simply their Marriage but their use of it which those Persons disliked About the same time Epiphanius writ his Panarium wherein opposing the Chastity and Continence of the Catholick Clergy to the Heretick call'd Apostolici saith that Continence even from their own Wives was universally observed by them but then is forced to qualifie his Boast with this Clause This is done chiefly where the Ecclesiastical Canons or rather Customs for no such Canons were yet made are accurate But you will certainly say to me that in some places Priests Deacons and Subdeacons do yet beget Children This is done not according to the Canon or Rule of ut most Perfection but by the negligence of Men increasing with time and by reason of the multitude of the Clergy there being not found a sufficient number of continent Persons Here it may be observed that this Custom of voluntary Continence was not introduced in some places that where it was introduced it obtained not universally which may be gathered from the word chiefly and lastly that even there it was a Novel Introduction For speaking of those Clergy who did not abstain he saith they yet beget Children But after all we are not to rely much upon his Testimony even in a matter of Fact. The good Man who was far from an accurate Writer seemeth to have taken his Measures wholly from his Native Country of Palestine wherein he was very much conversant even after he was Bishop which Province was at that time â—…illed with Monks and Monkish Clergy who flocked thither out of reverence to the Holy Places The Author indeed of the Homilies upon Job amongst St. Chrysostom's Works testifies that in his time the use of Marriage was forbidden to Bishops and therefore Bellarmin fails not to make use of his Authority But first this concerns not the inferiour Clergy and then these Homilies belong not to St. Chrysostom in the Judgment both of Fronto Ducaeus and Sir H. Savil but seem to have been written after the Quinisext Council when Continence was first imposed upon the Bishops in the Greek Church In the middle of the Fifth Age Socrates the Historian writ who observeth it as a peculiar Custom of Thessalia Macedonia and Achaia that the Clergy there abstained from their Wives therein dissenting from the Custom of the rest of the Eastern Church saith indeed that many abstained from the use of Marriage in other parts of the East but that All who did this did it of their own accord even Bishops doing it only voluntarily not necessitated to it by any Canon For many of them in the time of their Bishoprick have begotten Children of their lawful Wives So plain a passage needs no Comment In a few Ages this voluntary Abstinence of Bishops became universal in most Provinces of the East although the Bishops of Africk Libia and some other places retained as formerly the use of Marriage Therefore in the end of the Seventh Age the Quinisext Council took advantage from this voluntary Abstinence to impose a necessary Abstinence upon all Bishops and obliged the Bishops of Africa herein to conform themselves to the general Custom They inflicted no Censure upon the African Bishops for retaining the Company of their Wives nor so much as blame them but rather term them most religious Bishops and profess they impose Abstinence upon them only for the better Edification of the People Till that Council the Bishops of the East freely enjoyed the use of Marriag This we have prov'd by the preceeding Testimonies and may be further evinced by the Authority of Balsamon the greatest Canonist of the Eastern Church whose words are these Before the Sixth Synod held in Trullo it was lawful for Bishops to have Wives even after their Consecration as well as Priests and Deacons who are ordained after Marriage So that Eutychius Patriarch of Alexandria is grosly mistaken when he terminates the Marriage of Bishops at the times of â—…he Council of Nice if he doth not rather mean that till then they all retained their Wives but after that time they began a voluntary Abstinence which sense indeed his words do more naturally import As for the Marriage of the inferiour Clergy that was so commonly used at that time in the Eastern Church that in Armenia they had taken up a custom of admitting none
into the Clergy but the Sons of the Clergy This was indeed a great Abuse and worthy of redress which was therefore abolished by the Quinisext Council as coming too near to Jewish Superstition From general Testimonies I pass to particular Instances and Examples of the Marriage of the Eastern Clergy after the Council of Nice In that Council was present Spyridon Bishop of Trymithus in Cyprus celebrated by all the Writers of those times for his Holiness Miracles and Gift of Prophecy Of him Sozomen saith He had Wife and Children and yet was not thereby in the least hindred or rendred less fit and successful in the Administration of holy things This Note plainly intimates that he used the company of his Wife while Bishop Otherwise the Observation would have been trifling since a married Bishop not using his Marriage is in the same condition with an unmarried one Presently after the Council of Nice Gregory was made Bishop of Nazianzum He had married a Wife a little before by whose means he was converted to the Catholick Faith and who lived with him to an extream old Age for they were both present at the Funeral of their Son Caesarius when Gregory had been now Bishop Forty Years He had by her after he was made Bishop Two Sons Gregory Nazianzen and Caesarius and most probably one Daughter for Nazianzen seems to have been older than his Sister but most certainly was many years older than his Brother Caesarius yet that himself was born after his Father was made Bishop he assures us in his Life where he introduceth his Father thus speaking to him You have not yet run through so many years of your Life as I have years of my Pastoral Charge Baronius affirms this to have been spoken hyperbolically that the use of Marriage was then forbidden to Bishops by the Canons and Constitutions of the Universal Church and these Canons most religiously observed both in the East and West that it may be demonstrated from Arguments of Chronology Nazianzen was born before the Council of Nice when his Father was not yet Baptized The first Argument is already confuted by the precedent Testimonies the second ariseth to no more than this that Nazianzen was Thirty Years old when St. Basil parted from Athens that Basil studied at Athens with Julian who by the Testimony of Ammianus Marcellinus was come thither in the year 354. and that consequently Nazianzen was born in the year 324. the year before the Council of Nice This Chronology of Baronius Jac. Capellus saith he hath refuted in his History of the Church I have not that Book now by me and therefore not knowing whether he hath made good his Promise must offer some considerations to the Reader in opposition to Baronius his Argument First then uncertain Arguments of Chronology formed at this distance of time ought not to invalidate the clear Testimony of Nazianzen who best knew when himself was born Secondly Nazianzen saith not he was thirty years old when Julian came to Athens but when Basil parted thence Now Basil not only might but most probably did stay several years at Athens not only after the Arrival but even after the Departure of Julian At least most certainly he departed not before Julian who left Athens in the end of the year 355. For St. Basil tells Julian that they had learned together at Athens 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theology and all the better sorts of Literature and throughly searched the Holy Scriptures This was a Labour of more than a few Months and therefore Basil cannot be supposed to have left Athens before Julian who stayed there but little more than a year Thirdly Nazianzen saith not he was thirty years old when Basil left Athens but almost thirty and that in a Poetick Work where being not able to express the just time of his Age he was forced to make use of a round number which may admit a Latitude of two or three years And it is most certain that his Father was made Bishop presently after the Council as himself assures us So that even Arguments of Chronology make it probable Nazianzen was born after his Fathers Ordination to which his own Testimony being added make it most certain And then his Brother Caesarius was so much younger than himself that in his Funeral Oration upon him he frequently calls him a young Man and often laments his untimely Death although his Father had been then Bishop above Forty Years In the year 362. Basilius Presbyter of Ancyra and Eupsychius of Caesaria in Cappadocia Who had newly married a Wife and was yet as it were a Bridegroom suffered Martyrdom It appears not directly from the words of the Historian whether the later was of the Clergy But the words of Athanasius will put it past all doubt who numbring the Writers of this time which opposed Arianism mentions Eupsychius Bishop of Cappadocia of which Caesaria was the Metropolis if he means the same Eupsychius which is not improbable However if this be uncertain most certain it is that St. Gregory Bishop of Nyssa was married and lived with his Wife Theosebia till her Death This Nicephorus testifieth saying that when he was Bishop he retained the Society of his Wife and whose Authority is far greater than Nicephorus's Nyssen's intimate Friend Nazianzen who writing to Nyssen a consolatory Letter upon the Death of his Wife saith She had always lived with him aâ—…d mutually shared with him all the comforts of Life and calls her truly holy the worthy Wife and Companion of a Bishop I will produce but one example more but that so pregnant and express that it might alone teach us what was the Discipline of the Eastern Church in that Age. About the year 410. Synesius was for the repute of his great Learning chosen Bishop of Ptolemais in Egypt He was then married and had a Wife whom he professed to love passionately It seems the voluntary Abstinence from the use of Marriage which some Bishops of the East had undergone was become an universal Custom among the Bishops of Egypt so that the People expected that a married Man promoted to the Episcopal Dignity should renounce the Pleasures of Marriage And there was a particular Reason why this Custom should generally obtain in Egypt rather than in any other Provinces of the East Egypt was then the great School and Nursery of Monastick Discipline which had probably at that time more Monks residing in it than the whole VVorld besides The Bishops of Egypt were almost all taken out of these Monks and consequently so great a Veneration for Celibacy possessed the Egyptians that those few married Bishops which were among them could by no other means conserve the Reverence and esteem which was due to their Character than by a voluntary renunciation of their Marriage Synesius therefore that he might not deceive the expectation of the People and willing to decline the burden professed
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
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
Vow must be annexed to Orders either by Divine Right or only by the Command of the Church If the former that were indeed sufficient but then it is absolutely false as we proved in the first Proposition and Bellarmine expresly acknowledgeth and may be further evinced by this Argument that then neither the Church nor the Pope could grant a Dispensation of Marriage to any of the Clergy If it be annexed only by Ecclesiastical Right or Command of the Church then our former Argument will return with more force For he who in receiving of Orders shall omit to make that tacit Vow will not be guilty of so much as a Lye or Dissimulation He neglected indeed the command of the Church but a Vow he neither made nor pretended to make So that there remains only a presumptive Vow the truth of which resides in every mans breast and conscience So that none ought to be excluded from Marriage by a Vow even supposing it valid and inviolable but those who shall confess they made it And therefore the Author of the Gloss upon the Decretals of Gregory IX professeth that himself and many other Doctors with him cannot imagine how the Clergy of the Western Church can be said to be obliged by Vow to Continence This were enough to silence the Plea of a tacit Vow yet I shall add somewhat more as first The II. Council of Toledo Decrees that none be looked upon to have vowed Continence but those who being asked by the Bishop promise it Coram tota plebe before the whole Congregation And all Councils which command a Vow to be taken by the Clergy at their Ordination order it to be made openly in the face of the whole Church Secondly in the Primitive Church many were Ordained violently and against their wills So St. Augustine tells Donatus That many were apprehended to be ordained Bishops kept in bold against their wills dragged shut up and imprisoned and suffer all this unwillingly till they be forced to receive Ordination So was St. Augustine himself seized npon violently by the people of Hippo dragged to their Bishop Valerius and ordained amidst abundance of tears So Epiphanius ordained Paulinianus Brother of St. Hierom as himself confesleth For seeing him present at Divine Service without the least apprehension of any such violence intended against him he commanded the Deacons to apprehend him and hold his mouth with their hands and in that posture ordained him Deacon and immediately after he had with many Intreaties perswaded him to do somewhat at the Altar belonging to the Office of a Deacon commanded him to be anew apprehended and in the same manner ordained him Priest. Now shall such Clergy-men as these be thought to have made a tacit Vow of Continence at their Ordinations or must they forfeit all right of marrying or if already married must their marriage be dissolved and against their will by the violence of others Thirdly Almost all the Divines of the Church of Rome agree that Children are capable of receiving Holy Orders Many Examples of it have been seen in that Church and at this day great numbers of Children are ordained Priests and Deacons in the Abyssine Church Fourthly Gregory Thaumaturgus was ordained Bishop of Neocaesarea by Phadimus of Amasea absent and not so much as dreaming of it Now shall either he or those Children be presumed to have made a Vow of Continence at their Ordination when the first were not capable of making a Vow the second did not know that he was ordained Lastly Supposing this Vow to have been openly and explicitely made granting it to have been intended and none of all these many necessary Circumstances wanting yet will it not oblige if it be not accepted by God. For that the Vow is made to God not to the Church all agree so that if it be not accepted by God it becomes only a simple Resolution of the Mind which every man hath a right to change as he shall see good Now we cannot be assured God accepts this Vow unless it be either for some excellency and holiness in Celebacy or because himself commanded it both which we before disproved Nay rather seeing it draws many into open Incontinency and exposeth all to the danger of it it is prejudicial to the honour of God to imagine that he accepts much less delights in such Vows At least there is no promise of acceptance and therefore the Obligation of these Vows will ever be uncertain I pass to the Second Proposition that a Vow of Continence obligeth not in case of insuperable Incontinence For no man can be obliged by Vow or even the greatest Authority upon Earth to commit a sin which in this case will be inevitable unless the Vow be violated And that cases of insuperable Incontinence without the use of Marriage may and do often happen I proved before when I demonstrated that all cannot contain And certainly if in temporal Affairs no Vow Contract or Promise obligeth in case of a natural impossibility much more will it not oblige in case of moral impossibility by how much the Vertues of the Soul are of more concern than the conveniencies of the Body But I will not further enlarge upon this Argument which is in it self so evident I choose rather to observe that it is highly probable that not only in case of impossibility but even of great and apparent difficulty a Vow of Continence ceaseth to oblige For first all the Defenders of the Pope's dispensing power proceed upon this foundation that Circumstances may alter the Obligation of a Vow and that when a greater good is to be attained it ceaseth to oblige And indeed this is highly reasonable For if circumstances can alter the nature of Actions as to Vice and Vertue which is on all hands granted then a Vow which in some circumstances may be laudable or at least lawful may in others become unlawful or at least not obligatory Now in case of violent although perhaps not insuperable temptations of Incontinence after a Vow of Chastity the circumstances of him that Vows are altered and by violating the Vow a greater good may be attained serenity of Mind freedom from unruly Passions and an escape from the danger of Sin. Not in this only but in many other cases also the diversity of circumstances may change the Obligation of a Vow Whence Aquinas determines That Because in matters belonging to himself a Man is easily deceiv'd in judging it is most fit such Vows should be either observed or omitted according to the pleasure of his Superiour yet so that if any great or manifest inconvenience should arise from the observation of such a Vow and there were no opportunity of recurring to the Superior a Man ought not to keep such a Vow Secondly It is acknowledged even in the Church of Rome that a Vow of Continence made by one married Person without the consent of the other is null and
Virginity began to be highly extolled and gained great Reputation in the Third Age. Many Causes concurred to advance this Reputation as the Convenience of the Church at that time the Mistakes of Catholick and Artifices of Hereticks I shall begin with the last and observe that in all the numerous train of Heresies from the Apostles time to the Council of Nice scarce was there any one which did not condemn Marriage or at least decry the Dignity of it and cry up Celibacy as the most Perfect and most Vertuous state and the nearest way to Heaven Which alone is no small Prejudice to the Doctrine and Practice of the present Church of Rome that the imaginary Excellencies of Celibacy were unknown to the World till discovered by the grossest and most foolish Hereticks that ever infected the Christian Church I do not hereby accuse the Church of Rome of their Heresie yet cannot but take notice that in urging Celibacy to her Clergy she proceeds upon the same Principles with them a greater Perfection and more refined Piety an unusal abstinence from all Pollutions of the Flesh and Pleasures of the World That some of them enjoyned not Celibacy to all their Followers but only persuaded it to those who aimed at Perfection and that the Heresie of Eustathius condemned by the Council of Gangra was in terminis revived by the Popes and Councils of the Eleventh Age. Saturnilus Disciple of Menander led the dance He first called Marriage the Doctrine of the Devil and was herein followed by an infinite rabble of Hereticks Nicolaites Cerinthians the Sects of Marcus Basildes Carpocrates Isidorus Marcion Cassian Tatian and many others who absolutely rejected Marriage as unlawful and impure and beneath the dignity of a spiritual and more perfect Christian To this end they pretend no less specious Reasons than are at this day alledged by the Patrons of Celibacy as that being freed from the Cares of a Family they might attend the better to Acts of Devotion and Piety That it was a noble Attempt and worthy the ambition of a Christian to surmount all the inclinations of the Flesh and by afflicting of it intirely subject it to the Soul not to yeild to the unruly Passions of the Body but rather by such a Mortification increase the perfections of the Soul with Faith and Knowledge Nor were these their only Reasons They also pretend to Tradition and although immediately after the Apostles deaths intitled their horrid Doctrines to those Sacred Names and to confirm their Plea forged Gospels Acts and Histories under the Apostles names injurious to Marriage and consonant to their own Opinions But so gross a Heresie however backed with great and specious pretences survived not the middle of the Third Age. When that declined other more subtil and refined Hereticks arose in their stead who indirectly and obliquely oppose Marriage yet upon the same topick of greater Purity and Perfection Thus the Montanists condemned all second Marriages and reviled the Catholicks who defended them with the opprobious Title of Pryâ—…hici or Carnal Men. Thus the Novatians revolted from the Church and accused her of licentionsness because she admitted to Communion those Digamists who after a Divorce of one Wife for whatsoever cause even for that of Adultery had married another Lastly thus the Manichees although enjoyning Celibacy to none nor forbidding Marriage to any through a mistaken Impurity in the use of it excluded all married Persons from the rank of their Elect or more perfect Christians and permitted it only to their Hearers or inferiour order of their Sect. And when all these Heresies were every where exploded by the Catholick Church the Reputation of Celibacy still found entertainment in the World as being more speciously and cunningly proposed especially by the Eustathian Hereticks who aflixed it only to the Clergy and refused to communicate with married Priests imagining the Sacraments by them administred to be wholly ineffectual Thus did the Celibacy of the Clergy gradually advance from a gross and foolish Heresie to a regular and well formed errour And however these antient Hereticks committed the most abominable Villanies and unnatural Lusts under pretence of absolute Purity and Continence so that what Pope Leo said of the Priscillianists might justly be applied to them all They detested Marriage because there is no liberty for uncleanness where the Chastity of the Nuptial Bed and the hope of Posterity is preserved notwithstanding their promiscuous Fornications and brutish Lusts which gave scandal to the very Heathens The glorious pretence of Chastity and Perfection gained infinite applause in the World and drew multitudes of Sectators after them The very name of Encratites or continent Persons common to all these Hereticks commanded Veneration from 〈◊〉 people and all were apt to admire an imaginary Perfection which they found themselves so much wanted It seems ever to have been the unhappiness of Mankind to be deluded with excesses of Vertue although all such naturally degenerate into Vices or at least into things indifferent Thus a rash and precipitate boldness is admired beyond a moderate aud well-governed valour and Enthusiasm ever gains greater esteem than a sober and rational Devotion Thus among the Speculative Sects of Heathen Philosophy Platonists among the Moral Sects Stoicks and Cynicks obtained the greatest applause meerly because the first pretended to an extraordinary and perhaps impossible abstraction of the Mind from corporeal and sensitive Objects and the latter boasted of a perfect Immunity from all Passions and the exercise of a tyrannical command over the Body And both seemed to trample under foot the considerations of Flesh and Blood and surmount the ordinary Capacity of Mankind Such prejudices as these recommended Celibaâ—…y to the World and advanced the pretentions of these antient Hereticks Who although they corrupted not the whole Church with the Poison of their Errour yet they almost every where introduced false Notions of Marriage into the Minds of Men and although they could not cause it to be universally condemned yet at least procured it to be generally despised And indeed never did any Heresie prevail in the Church which did not leave some tincture of it self even in the Minds of Catholicks Thus it may be observed that there is not one Writer in the Fifth Age wherein some touch either of Pelagianism or Predestinatism may not be discovered How far the Heresie of these Encratites prevailed and secretly corrupted the Judgment of Catholicks I shall next enquire First then The Relicks of the Eustathian Heresie so far prevailed among the Catholicks that many of them believed it highly indecent for him to meddle with the Administration of Sacred Things who indulged himself the liberty of Marriage as if he had contracted some Impurity thereby and made himself unworthy of the holy Office an Errour common to all the Patrons of Celibacy which proceeded so far in the time of Gregory Nazianzen that many would not willingly receive Baptism or the Eucharist
of Marriage drawn from the old Mistake of an unworthiness to administer things contracted by the supposed impurity of Marriage commandeth Priests and Deacons thence forward to abstain from the company of their Wives upon pain of Deposition from their Offices From the Preface of this Constitution it appears that the Use of Marriage was then indifferently used by the Clergy and defended as Lawful against the Oppugners of it I understand saith Siricius that many Priests and Deacons have a long time after their Ordination had Children as well by their own Wives as by Fornication and defend this their Doing by Prescription because in the Old Testament Marriage was permitted to the Priests It seems to have been by this time become a general Custom in the particular Church of Rome and all the greater Churches of Italy for Bishops Priests and Deacons to abstain from the company of their Wives This they did voluntarily there being yet no Ecclesiastical Constitution to enforce it and in that case removed their Wives out of their Families and lived separately from them That this was voluntarily is manifest as well because no Command of any such Abstinence as yet made by the Church can be produced as from several Examples of the Italian Clergy of this time who enjoyed the company of their Wives after Ordination as we shall hereafter prove That this Custom extended not into the remoter Provinces is manifest from the words of St. Ambrose who writ about this time and persuading this total Abstinence to his Clergy of Milan saith In many remoter places the Clergy beget Children in the time of their Deaconship or even Priesthood and this they defend by Ancient Custom where the last words are very remarkable Siricius therefore seduced with the common Prejudices of that Age and imagining it to be no small Crime in the Clergy of Spain not to canform to the Customs of Rome interposed his Authority and commanded them to do that which he saw they would never perform of their own accord The embracing of the Vulgar Prejudices about Celibacy are not the only argument of Siricius his simplicity This very Epistle carrieth other evident tokens of it along with it For to omit the many Superstitious Cautions about the Marriage of the Inferior Clergy he forbids Marriage to all Persons whatsoever who had ever done publick Penance for Fornication A Command which wholly evacuates the Apostles Precept of Marriage making Fornication an impediment of Marriage which by the Apostle was assigned as a remedy of it The next year Siricius writing to the Bishops of Africa pursueth the same design but here remembring that he acted out of his own Patriarchate he presumeth not to command but only adviseth Celibacy I persuade advize admonish intreat that Priests and Deacons would not accompany with their Wives And all upon the same topick of the Incongruity of conjugal Embraces with the Priestly Office. Let us now see what effect this Command of Siricius had in Spain or his Admonition in Africk In Spain the first Council of Toledo was held in the Year 400. which decreed That those Deacons who had not abstained from their Wives after Ordination should continue in their Office but be made incapable of ever rising to the Priesthood and in like manner Priests who had not abstained should be incapable of the Episcopal Dignity inflicting on them no further Punishment The same Command had it seems been sent by Siricius to the Bishops of Piemont who meeting in a Council at Turin An. Dom. 397. made a Canon of the same nature with that of Toledo only debarring the Clergy who would not submit to a total Abstinence from ascending to higher Dignities in the Church In Africa the Pope received a Repulse The Eleventh Council of Carthage was in the year 390. wherein a motion was made by Faustianus the Popes Legat that Bishops Priests and Deacons should be enjoyned to total Abstinence The Synod would not yeild to that but only decreed That Bishops Priests and Deacons or those who administred the Sacraments should always preserve Chastity and when they ministred at the Altar even abstain from their Wives For that the Antients believed Chastity not to be inconsistent with the use of Marriage we before proved And this partial Abstinence of the Clergy in the time of their waiting at the Altar fully satisfied Siricius his Argument which proceeded upon the indecency of performing the Duties of Marriage and the Administration of Holy Things at the same time That this is the trne sense of the Canon we shall demonstrate by proving that the Canon which we shall next relate meant no more For that both are to be understood in the same sense all agree In the year therefore 398. was held the Fifth Council of Carthage which made this following Canon Be it enacted That Bishops Priests and Deacons abstain even from their Wives in their own courses Which if they do not let them be deposed But that the rest of the Clergy be not compelled to do this but the customs of every particular Church are to be observed Bellarmin Binius and other Writers of the Church of Rome maintain that a total Abstinence is here enjoyned to the Clergy contrary to the plain sense of the Canon For this they alledge only the Authority of St. Austin and tht Decree of Gratian which instead of Secundum propria statuta wherein the stress of the Canon lieth reads Secundnm priora Statuta according to former Constitutions As for the Authority of Gratian that is of no Moment when opposed to the constant Agreement of all the Latin Copies of the Acts of this Council Nor even can we be assured that Gratian's Copy read it Secundum priora Statuta since it is very usual with him to represent the Antient Monuments of the Church not exactly in their own Words but accommodated to the Sentiments and Practice of his own time As for St. Austin his Authority indeed would be sufficient for he was present in the Council but he saith nothing of it in the place alledged only proposeth to the Laity who hardly endured to be restrained to the Embraces of one Woman the Example of the Clergy who practised a total Astinence For this infers no more than that some or many of the Clergy did totally abstain which none denieth and we readily grant The confutation of our Adversaries Reasons were sufficient in this case However I will produce some further Reasons in confirmation of that sense of the Canon which we follow and the words do naturally import First then The Antient Greek Code of the Canons of the African Church compsosed before the time of the Sixth Council followeth this sense translating the Words into Question by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in their proper courses or times of waiting Secondly the Fathers of the Quinisext Council commanding Priests and Deacons wholly to contain in the time
of the Administration of Holy Things profess they herein follow and ratifie this Canon of the Council of Cartharge And that they did not mistake or misrepresent the sense of it appears from the Subscriptions of Peter Patriarch of Alexandria and his African Bishops to the Acts of the Quinisext Council which they would never have done had they been conscious that the Canons of their own Church were therein falsified and misrepresented Lastly Balsamon Zonaras Aristenus and Blastares do thus unanimously explain it only of a partial Abstinence of the Clergy from their Wives when they celebrate the greatest Festivals and Solemnities of the Church I will produce only the words of Blastares When the time calls them to the Administration of Holy Things and participation of the Sacraments then ought they to abstain even from the company of their own Wives manifesting their continence by their Works But the fourth Canon of this Code which is the second of the Eleventh Council of Carthage beforementioned and others like it being obscurely worded and Commanding the Clergy administring Holy Things to abstain from their Wives gave occasion to the Latins to require those who are to be ordained to put away their Wives Or if we should grant that this is the sense or these Canons themselves would be more worthy to be put out of the number of Sacred Canons than the Apostolick Canons of those of other Councils which decreed the direct contrary to them if they be taken in the sense of the Latins In the end of this Age Helvidius and Jovinian in the beginning of the next Vigilantius appeared in defence of Marriage against the exorbitant pretention of Celibacy What their particular Opinions were is not well known nor may we safely believe St. Hierom their professed Adversary in representing of them since all the World knows how much he hath misrepresented Ruffinus However certain it is all of them were guilty of some Errours Hilvidius thought the V. Mary to have had several Children by her Husband Joseph after the Birth of Jesus Jovinian maintained the equality of all sins impeccability of regenerate persons Vigilantius believed it convenient for the present State of the Church which received great prejudice from the incontinence of the unmarried Clergy that none should be admitted into Orders which were not married that so all danger of future scandal might be prevented All these we willingly grant to have been Errours but not Heresies The first might be owing to a mistake of History the last of Policy and the second indeed was notoriously false but far from the Contagion of Heresie As for their common Opinion about Marriage it seems to have been no more than this that the intrinsick merits of Marriage and Celibacy were both equal which however branded with the name of Heresie by St. Hierom is a most certain Truth If they believed the accidental Merits of both to be equal which it can be never proved that they did this indeed was a mistake for Persons who have the gift of Continence may do greater service to God and the Church in an unmarried than in a married State but a mistake that neither injured Faith nor was repugnant to Revelation Indeed Jovinian had a peculiar Errour of a grosser nature that the violation of a Vow of Continence was a thing indifferent even in those who could contain For we willingly allow that when a Vow of Continence can without any great difficulty or danger be preserved it ought in no case to be violated However that any of them were formal Hereticks can by no means be proved Rather it is most certain that Vigilantius not only drew several Catholick Bishops into the same Opinion with himself who thereupon conferred Orders to none but married Men but that he lived and died in the Communion of the Catholick Church St. Hierom indeed loadeth them all with the most opprobious names and termeth them the worst of Hereticks but his Prejudice and Passion is too well known to be herein trusted In opposition to these Men St. Hierom writ several Tracts which in truth are so many Panegyricks of Celicy and invectives against Marriage Here he adopts and reinforceth all the prejudices and mistakes of the former and present Age particularly so far urged the supposed Impurity of Marriage that he asserts it to be a Sin and excludes married Persons from all hopes of Salvation as we before proved by producing several places to which might be added many more This was an Errour far greater than any of those which he opposed and which if dogmatically proposed and pertinaciously maintained would be downright Heresie But we charitably suppose those harsh expressions were rather the effects of his Passion than the products of his Judgment And if he hath exceeded all bounds and limits of Reason in depressing Marriage no less hath he in exalting Celibacy This himself acknowledgeth when upon a review of his Book against Helvidius he confesseth he plaid the Oratour too much and extended his Rhetorick beyond the bounds of severe Truth This his Errours about Marriage and proceeding upon false prejudices may justly invalidate St. Hieroms Authority in the case of Celibacy which yet he no where saith is necessary for the Clergy but only highly eonvenient and decorous to the dignity and holiness of their Order It may be some further Diminution to his Authority in this case that all these extravagant Encomiums of Virginity seem to have proceeded only from an immoderate desire of repairing thereby his injured Reputation and the honour of his Name suffering under unjust suspicions of too great familiarity with the Lady Paula which had proceeded so far and taken such deep root in the Minds of the Romans that he was forced to leave Rome in disgrace when he was designed by all men to succeed Damasus in the Popedom Upon Occasion of St. Hierom I will here say somewhat of Epiphanius who alone besides him of all the Writers of this time seems fond of the Celibacy of the Clergy Although he not only alloweth but even adviseth Marriage to them in case of insuperable Incontinence His great Affection and Veneration of St. Hierom made him ready to receive whatsoever was proposed by him And then his weak Judgment enabled him not to discover the Sophistry and Mistakes of his Reasoning Of the Imbecillity of his Judgment Photius long since observed That in his great Work against Heresies he had done Injury to Truth by a weak Defence of it In the beginning of the Fifth Age Pope Innocent I. renewed and confirmed the Constitutions of his Predecessour Siricius in Two Epistles one to Victricius Bishop of Roan written in the Year 404. the other to Exuperius Bishop of Tholouse in the Year following In both he alledgeth and enforceth only the old Argument of the Impurity of Marriage which made it incompatible with the daily Administration of Holy Things performed by the
Clergy He commandeth Priests and Deacons for Subdeacons he mentions not who abstained not from their Wives in Obedience to the Constitution of Siricius to be deposed except perhaps they had been ignorant of the Constitution For in that case he would only have them obliged to Continence for the future That these and indeed all the first Twenty Six Epistles of this Pope are spurious many learned Men have endeavoured to prove with many Arguments But I will not insist on that It is not improbable that he made such a Decree Celibacy was then fitted to the Genius of the Age and particularly of the See of Rome After Innocent Pope Leo I. carried on the Design yet further and in an Epistle to Anastasius Bishop of Thessalonica forbid the use of Marriage to Subdeacons also thereby perfecting the System of Celibacy at this Day used in the Church of Rome The same Constitution he re-inforced in an Epistle to Rusticus Bishop of Narbon prescribing the same Law of Continence to the Ministers of the Altar viz. Deacons and Subdeacons as to Bishops and Priests These were the Decrees of the Popes of Râ—…me which were oâ—…t-times renewed and sometimes relaxed by the following Popes As for the Western Councils of this and the following Ages they were all Provincial and pretended to no Authority out of their own Provinces The Council of Orange was the first which ever imposed total Abstinence upon the Clergy It was a Convention of no more than Seventeen Bishops in the Year 441. who then made this Canon If any one after he hath received Deacons Orders be found incontinent with his Wife Let him be deposed from his Office. Providing in the following Canon that this Punishment extend not to those who had retained the use of their Wives before this Canon was made Whence it may be gathered that total Abstinence was not yet enjoyned to the Clergy of the Gallican Church by any Publick Authority and that the Decrees of Pope Innocent directed to the Bishops of Roan and Tholouse as acting out of his own Patriarchat had not been received The Second Council of Arles in the Year 452. comes next which in the Second Canon forbids any married Man to be ordained Priest who doth not vow Continence in the Forty Third Canon extends the same to Deacons in the Forty Fourth Canon forbids to Deacons the use of Marriage in the Words of the Council of Orange in the Third Canon forbids Bishops Priests and Deacons to keep their VVives with them in the same House unless they also have vowed Continence upon pain of Excommunication This Punishment was thought too great and was therefore moderated by the First Council of Tours A. D. 461. who enjoyning total Abstinence from their VVives to Priests and Deacons enact withal That if any Priest or Deacon use the Company of his VVife he be not excommunicated but only reduced to Lay-Communion In the year 506. the Council of Agatha received and confirmed the Constitutions of Siricius and Innocent about the Continence of Priests and Deacons and further enjoyn that their VVives be not permitted to dwell with them although they also promise Continence In the year 531. the Second Council of Toledo decreed That those who from their Childhood were by their Parents dedicated to the Holy Office and were to that end brought up at the Charge of the Church should when they came to the Age of Eighteen be asked publickly by the Bishop in the face of the Church VVhether they were willing to oblige themselves never to marry If they were then they might be ordained Subdeacons and gradually arise to the higher Offices of the Church If not then they might have leave to marry and whensoever both married Parties should promise Continence the Husband should be received into Orders Here is the first mention of a Vow of Continence exacted of those that were to be ordained that can be found in Ecclesiastical History And here also it was first forbidden to Subdeacons to marry VVives after their Ordination for this concerned not those Subdeacons who married before Ordination whereas in all the precedent Councils it was left free to Subdeacons as well as to the other inferiour Orders to enjoy their Wives married either before or after their Ordination to that Office. The Council of Clermont Anno 535. complaining that many Priests and Deacons notwithstanding the Prohibition of the Church had used the Company of their Wives and begotten Children of them commands all such to be degraded from their Office. The Fourth Council of Orleans in the year 541. ordered That Priests and Deacons should not be permitted to dwell with their Wives upon pain of Deposition thereby to take away ever all suspicion of forbidden Commerce The Third Council of Orleans had before in the year 538. forbid the use of Marriage not only to Priests and Deacons but also to Subdeacons The Fifth Council of Orleans commands all Clergy-men of whatsoever Dignity or Order who return to the Embraces of their Wives after Ordination to be for ever degraded and reduced to Lay-Communion The Council of Auxerre in the year 578. enjoyn Priests Deacons and Subdeacons upon pain of Deprivation not to accompany with their Wives calling that a carnal Sin. The First Council of Mascon in the year 581. repeat and renew the Canon of the Council of Clermont The Third Council of Lyons in the year 583. forbids the use of Marriage to Bishops Priests Deacons and Subdeacons and the cohabitation of their Wives to the three first Orders In a French Council about the year 620. all Marriage and cohabitation of Women was forbidden to Priests and Deacons In the Fourth Council of Toledo Anno 633. it was ordered That Priests and Deacons should promise Continence before their Bishop when they were inducted into their Livings and Preferments The Eighth Council of Toledo in the year 653. laments the Obstinacy of many Priests and Deacons retaining their Wives and even marrying after Ordination against the Canons of the Church and severely forbids it for the future In the year 868. the Council of Worms commanded Bishops Priests Deacons and Subdeacons to abstain from their Wives upon pain of Deprivation Many other Councils between the year 600 and a 1000. forbid the Cohabitation of all Women and consequently also of VVives to the Clergy And many others permit only Mothers Sisters and Aunts to dwell with the Clergy rejecting all other VVomen under the Name of Extraneae wherein they seem to have mistaken the meaning of the Third Canon of the Council of Nice Lastly some Councils proceeded so far as to inhibit to the Clergy the Cohabitation of all VVomen whatsoever even Mothers Sisters Aunts and the nearest Relations permitted by the Council of Nice Thus did the Council of Mentz in the year 888. observing that some Priests had committed Incest with their own Sisters see
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
World lived together in a common Retirement so far from forsaking the Duties of Marriage that in that state they gave Education to a numerous Off-spring of Children That Prosper commonly reputed Bishop of Rhegium was married is manifest from his Poem dedicated to his Wife Sidonius Apollinaris Bishop of Clermont had married while a Lay-man Papianilla Daughter of Avitus the Emperour and that she lived with him after his Ordination appears from an Epistle written to her when absent about the common affairs of their Family under the Reign of Nepos who was made Emperour in the year 474. two years after Sidonius his Consecration and from the authority of Gregory Turonensis who relates that Sidonius when Bishop used to take his Plate out of the house by stealth and give it to the Poor which his Wife was wont to redeem with Money His Predecessour in that See Namatius built the Cathedral Church of Clermont and at the same time his Wife built the Church of St. Stephen in the Suburbs But a more eminent Example of the Practice of the Gallican Church at that time is the Election of Simplicius Bishop of Bourges The Bishops of the Province not agreeing in the choice of a Bishop committed the disposition of the whole matter to Sidonius giving him a power of Nomination Sidonius then going to Bourges nominated Simplicius a married man whom in a Speech he thus recommended to the People His Wife is descended from the Family of the Palladii who have possessed the Chairs either of Professours or Bishops with great Commendation of their Order In truth because the person of a Matron requires a modest and brief mention I dare constantly â—…verr that woman is not unworthy of her Relation to the Clergy of both Families he had before said that Simplicius also descended of the Race of Priests either that wherein she was born and brought up or that whither she was removed by Marriage They both educate their Children prudently and vertuously In the name therefore of thâ—… Father Son and Holy Ghost Simplicius is he whom I pronounce shall be your Bishop To what purpose was all this Commendation of Simplicius his Wife or what did it concern the People what manner of woman she was if immediately upon his Ordination she must have retired from his Family and cease to be his Wife And then which is most observable Sidonius pronounced him Bishop without giving him any previous notice of it when neither his nor his Wifes resolutions of a total future absâ—…inence from the use of their Marriage could be supposed to be known and therefore must be supposed not to have been required of them As for his willingness to accept the Bishoprick they enquired not after that since in that Age they thought it lawful to force men to take upon them the Pastoral charge but never thought it lawful to force them to put away their Wives and abjure the Duties of Marriage In the next Age Venantius Fortunatus mentions the Posterity of Emelius Bishop of Burdeaux and in one almost whole Book celebrates the Praises of Leontius his Successour and Placidina his Wife descended from Siâ—…onius of Clermont who adorned with Hangings the Churches which her Husband built Some few years before Sidonius Apollinaris Son of the same Sidonius had obtained his Fathers Bishoprick by the Intrigues of his Wife Placidina In the same Age or towards the end of the former Gerhardus or Genebaldus the first Bishop of Laon having at his Ordination separated himself from his Wife the Niece of St. Remigius afterwards changed his Resolutions and resuming her society begat St. Latro of her who succeeded him in his Bishoprick Many other married Bishops of these and the succeeding Ages might be reckoned but these are sufficient to shew that neither the Constitutions of Popes nor Canons of Councils ever gained universal Reception in any part of the Western Church the use of Marriage being still retained by many Bishops eminent both for Piety and Learning So true is it what Polydore Virgil confesseth that notwithstanding the frequent repetition of the Law of Celibacy Marriage could never be wrested from the Western Clergy before the Popedom of Gregory VII Many other Arguments might be produced to demonstrate that the use of Marriage was retained by the Clergy of the antient Church which however they be less direct than those already mentioned yet are they no less conclusive Of this kind is the Practice of all those Hereticks and Schismaticks who departing from the Western Church before Celibacy was introduced retained the use of Marriage to their Clergy It being the custom of all Hereticks whose Errours were meerly speculative to preserve that Ecclesiastical Discipline which the Church then used when they departed from her but not think themselves obliged by any subsequent Decrees of it Thus the Goths and Vandals being infected with Aâ—…ianism under the Reign of Valens before any imposition of Celibacy was attempted in the Church and afterwards seating themselves in Spain took no notice of the Decrees of the Catholick Councils against the Marriage of the Clergy Hence it was that when towards the end of the sixth Age they began to be converted apace to the Orthodox Faith most of their Clergy were found to be married which forced the third Council of Toledo in the year 589. in a manner to dispense with them in this Canon It is observed by the H. Synod that the Bishops Priests and Deacons returning to the Church from Heresie do yet retain the use of their Wives That it may not therefore be done for the future it is ordered that they be separated from their Wives But if any will not condescend to that let him be reduced to the Order of Readers the fifth Order of the Clergy As for those who have all along been subject to the Canons of the Church if any of them accompany with their Wives let them be more severely punished Here the Council teacheth us what was the general Practice of the Arian Clergy at that time and acknowledgeth that they were not obliged by any precedent Ecclesiastical Canons about Celibacy whereas the Arians always confessed they were obliged by all Constitutions of the Catholick Church made before their departure from it The second Council of Caesarangusta or Caragosa in the year 592. made a not-unlike Canon although somewhat more severe For they commanded the converted Arian Clergy who would not part with their Wives to be reduced to Lay-Communion The Rules prescribed by many Councils to the Clergy for the government of their Wives are a no less certain Argument of their cohabitation with them The Council of Eliberis Neocaesarea and some others commands that if any Clergy-mans Wife commits Adultery after the Ordination of her Husband and he knows of it he shall be bound to put her away But if he will continue to cohabit with her he shall be incapable of executing
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
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
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
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
Churches but there was one Reason peculiar to the Western Church which however it may seem light was of great efficacy and that was the unhappy Fall of Tertullian into Montanism That Great and Learned Person naturally endowed with an ardent Genius of a severe and inflexible temper of Mind infinitely zealous for all outward appearances of religious Mortification and after his Fall prompted with that Enthusiastick Spirit which was the peculiar Character of the Montanists set himself to advance the Opinion of his Sect with all imaginable vigour The unlawfulness of Digamy was the chief Tenet of that Sect and that founded upon an erroneous Supposition of some Imperfection in the Use even of First Marriage In maintaining and recommending these Errours to the World Tertullian employed all the force of his Wit and Eloquence to debase the dignity of Marriage and extoll the merits of a Single-life whether Widowhood or Virginity The extraordinary reverence and esteem which his great Learning and apparent Zeal procured to him in succeeding Ages mightily propagated his Errours and corrupted his Readers with false Prejudices and Notions of Marriage and Virginity For altho' it had been reasonable and sufficient to say of him what St. Hierome once said when pressed hard with his Authority He was a Schismatick no Writer of the Church Yet few considered that the persuasive force of his Eloquence was more sensible than the remembrance of his Schism and then few enquired which Books he writ before and which after his Fall or rather it was a common Errour that he writ very few after and almost all before his Fall. Whereas in truth he writ before his Fall only the Three little Treatises of Baptism Repentance and Prayer not the Twentieth part of his Works now extant To this Reputation of Tertullian and the ill Effects of it contributed not a little the infinite esteem and veneration which St. Cyprian had for his Writings while unwary Persons imagined that the deference which that blessed Martyr paid to his Learning and Zeal was an effect of the soundness and orthodoxy of his Doctrine However certain it is that the Fall of Tertullian advanc'd and encreas'd the former Prejudices and this I take to be the only reason why Celibacy ever prevailed more in the Western than in the Eastern Church All these Prejudices were in themselves unlawful But there were other Reasons of preferring Celibacy in the Ancient Church which might have been allowed if not attended with such fatal Consequences And first many Catholicks openly espoused the cause of Celibacy and others winked at their Policy meerly to prevent the Delusion of more simple Catholicks by the no less glorious than fraudulent Pretences of the Encratites Who to use St. Hierome's words because they knew the name of Virginity was venerable covered the Wolves under Sheeps-cloathing Antichrist pretended to act the part of Christ and veiled the uncleanness of their Lives with the false honour of that usurped Name They esteemed it a laudable Policy to prevent the Mischief by proposing to the Practice of Men that very Perfection which the Hereticks so much boasted of and the Multitude were apt to admire as being always casier led with great Pretences than sober Truth A not unlike Policy with this was afterwards used by St. Chrysostome against the Arians when fearing the People would be seduced by their Enthusiastical singing of Hymns he set up the same way of singing of Hymns among the Catholicks and thereby prevented the design of the Arians a Stratagem as the Historian observeth and may be applied to our case which however specious was the Occasion of very ill Consequences While Celibacy thus gained ground by the Artisice of Hereticks and Connivance of Catholicks few interposed themselves to undeceive Mankind and stop the torrent of these vulgar Prejudices as well because the immoderate esteem of Celibacy seem'd a Matter of no great moment while it was forcibly imposed upon none nor made necessary to any as because the dis-favour and unjust suspicions of the Multitude would probably have attended such an undertaking While unreasonable Men would have esteemed such a Person as a Libertine an Enemy of refined and more severe Religion and thought him to have therein pleaded only for his own Passions and Inclinations And when Celibacy became once universally esteemed and great numbers of Lay-men vowing Virginity voluntarily abstained from Marriage who by their supposed Sanctity and specious Abstinence drew to themselves the eyes and admiration of all Men the Clergy also were necessitated to make some advances in the Use of Celibacy that they might not suffer loss of Reputation and seem less Vertuous and Spiritual than Lay-men Hence St. Hierome frequently urgeth the Celibacy of the Clergy by the Example of Lay-Virgins affirming it to be highly indecent that the Laity should exceed the Clergy even in voluntary Acts of Piety and Mortification This Reason afterwards received great advantage from the wonderful encrease of Monkery and Vows of Continence in the Fourth and Fifth Ages insomuch that Faustus the Manichee objected to St. Austin that the immoderate Commendation of Virginity had among the Catholicks produced this Effect that in all their Churches there seem'd to be a greater number of professed Virgins than married Women No wonder then if Reverence attending the unmarried and Contempt the married Clegry Celibacy prevailed in the Church and Marriage by being dis-esteeemed became also dis-used especially since Ambition contributed not a little to it For from the end of the Fourth Age the Bishops and greater Clergy were generally chosen out of the Monks and thereby Celibacy became the nearest way to Preferment But to return to the Third Age the frequent Persecutions of that time did not a little advance the Cause of Celibacy it being highly convenient to the Church that the Clergy should shew an Example of Constancy and Resolution to all other Christians which it was believed they would more readily perform when freed from the encumbrances of a married state and not with-holden with the temptations of Wife and Children For the fury of the Heathen Persecutors generally fell most heavy upon the Clergy and sometimes was directed against them only So that to be promoted to any eminent Place in the Church was to be exposed to certain Martyrdom For this reason as Eusebius somewhere relates in the Choice of Bishops single Persons were commonly preferred before married Men in Times of Persecution And then Celibacy was no grievous and intolerable burthen when attended with a continual Expectation of Death and being hurried away to Execution To which may be added that few were then received into the Priesthood but aged Men who by a long course of Vertue had given sufficient proof of their Continence and unspotted Chastity Whereas in the Church of Rome Boys were admitted to Profess or make a Vow of Continence at Fourteen Girls at Twelve years of age till the Council of Trent which reduced it
his Office saith the Canon of Ancyra he shall be excommunicated saith that of Eliberis This Canon doth not only prove beyond all contradiction the cohabitation of the Clergy with their Wives after Ordination but also it is most manifest that they abstain not from the company of their Wives by that proviso if her Husband knows that she commit Adultery which otherwise would have been impertinent For it cannot well be imagined that the Adultery of any mans Wife with whom he accompanieth not himself should escape his knowledge A Synod held in Ireland by St. Patrick in the year 450. or 456. decreed That if any Clergy-man from a Sexton to a Priest should be seen without his Coat or if his Wife walked abroad without a Veil upon her head they should be both of them contemned by the Laity and separated from the Church Where it would have been highly unjust to punish the Clergy for the light carriage of their Wives if at their Ordination they renounced the company of their Wives and thenceforth ceased to have any power over them The first Council of Toledo in the year 400. ordered That if the Wives of any Clergy-men were scandalous in their carriage or rather were false to their Beds their Husbands should have power to keep and imprison them in their houses and inâ—…lict any arbitrary punishment upon them which extended not to death But themselves should not so much as eat with them unless they first did penance Whence it appears that before the fault committed they might have eaten with their Wives and even after the fault may again receive them to the usual familiarity of a Wife if they will â—…irst do penance which was in conformity to the antient Canons of the Church which enjoyned that if the Adultery of even any Lay-mans Wife was notorious he should either be bound to put her away or if he will retain her first to do penance lest he should otherwise seem to have consented to and connived at her Adultery An evident Argument of the use of Marriage permitted to the Clergy may be also drawn from the violent and forcible Ordinations of Bishops Priests and Deacons which were frequent in the antient Church For many of these persons thus violently and against their wills ordained were married whose resolutions to abstain from their Wives could not then be known and as all acknowledge could not be forced Or if they should condescend to such a renunciation of the pleasures of Marriage yet was it uncertain whether their Wives would conâ—…ent to it Who if they should dissent they ought not to be defrauded of their Husbands Embraces as all will grant and therefore total abstinence was not universally used by the Clergy while such violent Ordinations were in use I will produce but two Examples of them Paulinus as himself relates being present in the Church of Barcelona upon Christmas-day was suddenly laid hold on by the people dragged to their Bishop Lampius then officiating at the Altar and ordained by him his Wife Therasia not knowing of it till it was done In Africa about the same time Pinianus an illustrious Nobleman of Rome but more famous for his Piety going with his Wife Melania to visit St. Augustin was beset in the Church of Hippo by the people and forced to divert their present intentions by promising them under Hand and Seal before many Witnesses that if they would now dismiss him he would in due time enter into Priests Orders among them This he did his Wife Melania being not only unwilling but even weeping and protesting against it as loath to descend from the pomp of a Roman Lady to the humility of a Priests Wife The Titles which were antiently bestowed upon the Wives of the Clergy are no mean Argument of their cohabitation and continued use of Marriage The Wives of Bishops Priests Deacons and Subdeacons are frequently in the Councils called Bishopesses Priestesses Deaconesses and Subdeaconesses Titles which argue they did not immediately cease to be Wives upon the promotion of their Husbands to those several Orders nor lose all relation to them Rather the first of these Canons enjoyn That a Bishop having no Bishopess no Wife shall not keep any number of women in his Family which plainly intimates that he might admit women into his Family if he had a Wife to preside over them and by her prudent government secure their sobriety Lastly Children are the visible Effects of Marriage and those many Sons of the Clergy which were eminent in the ancient Church manifest there were many more who neither deserved nor obtained any place in History and that the Marriage of the Clergy was then both frequent and honourable I will produce the chief of them In the First Age we have Petronilla Daughter of St. Peter four Virgin-Prophetesses Daughters of Philip the Evangelist and three Daughters of St. Philip the Apostle In the Second Age Marcion the degenerate Son of a Pious and Orthodox Bishop In the Third Age Domnus Son of Dometrianus Bishop of Antioch was made Bishop of that See upon the deprivation of Paulus Samosatenus In the Fourth Age Probus and Metrophanes were the Sons and in order Successours of Dometius Bishop of Bizantium Eustathus Bishop of Sebastea was Son of Eulalius Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia St. Gregory Nazianzen Bishop of Constantinople and Caesarius Count of the Empire and Questor of Bithynia both Sons of Gregory Bishop of Nazianzen Sozomen mentions a great Officer in the Court of Theodosius the Emperour son of Helladius Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia Flavius Dexter Praefectus-Praetorio of the East was the son of Pacianus Bishop of Barcelona Abra daughter of St. Hilary Eulampia daughter of Anicius a Presbyter and Mother of Philostorgius the Historian Apollinaris the learned Bishop of Laodicia son of the no less learned Apollinaris Presbyter of Laodicia Evagrius Ponticus Arch-deacon of Constantinople son of a Presbyter of Iberia Pope Anastatius Son of Maximus a Presbyter In the Fifth Age there was Julianus Bishop of Ecla in Campania son of Memor Bishop of Capua and his Wife Ia daughter of AEmilius Bishop of Beneventum St. Patrick son of Calphurnius a Deacon Leporius Presbyter of Marseilles son of Sulpicius Severus Presbyter of France as some think That Sulpicius was married is evident from his Epistle to Bassula his Mother-in-law Pope Boniface I. son of Secundus Presbyter of Rome Theodulus son of St. Nilus Presbyter of Elusa Auspiciola daughter of Salvian Presbyter of Marseilles Photina an holy virgin daughter of Theoctistus Presbyter of Lâ—…odicea Salonius and Verarius sons of Eucherius Archbishop of Lyons and both Bishops in their Father's life-time Gelasius Cyzicenus Archbishop of Caesarea in Palastine son of a Presbyter in Cyzicum Alcimus Avitus Archbishop of Vien and Apollinaris Bishop of Valence sons of Isicius Archbishop of Vien Superventor a Clergy-man of France son of Claudius a Bishop Pope Foelix III.
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
them and oft-times voluntarily spilt the consecrated Bloud upon the ground In Germany as Nauclerus relateth upon the prohibition of hearing the Masses of married Priests the Laity were forced to administer the Sacraments themselves and baptize their own Children This scandal arose much higher in England where when the same prohibition was by the procurement of Anselm enacted in a National Synod all Divine Service was for want of unmarried Priests generally discontinued in Parochial Churches and the Church-doors overgrown with Thorns As for the scandalous incontinence and uncleanness of the Clergy that is not much to be admired being the natural effect of imposed Celibacy But it may be justly wondred that while the Pope engaged with so much violence against the Marriage of the Clergy they willingly overlook'd and conniv'd at their Fornications and prodigious Impurities of Life This Petrus Damiani himself assures us and affirms it to be the custom of the Church of Rome in his time severely to exact other points of Ecclesiastical Discipline but to connive at and dispense with the Lust of the Clergy which was then become so brutal and notorious that he writ a Book entituled Gomorrhaeus particularly upon that subject This alone might justifie what we before observed that the Church of Rome imposed Celibacy upon the Clergy not for increase of Piety or advancemenâ—… of Purity but only for temporal ends and secular advantages However the Marriage of the Clergy wanted not Defendeâ—…s in this Age to maintain its right against the calumnies and tyranny of its Adversaries The Decrees of the Popes were condemned by some Councils universally opposed by the Clergy of all Nations and gained not success till a long and sharp contention In the year 1061. the Bishops of Lombardy by the instigation of Guibert Bishop of Parma met in a Council at Basil wherein they annulled the Decrees of Pope Nicolas and decreâ—…d That no Pope should be obeyed who would not 〈◊〉 and yield to their Infirmities About the same time the Clergy of Laon being urged by Petrus Damiani to put away their Wives produced in their defence a Decree of the Council of Tribur which permitted the use of Marriage to the Clergy Several Councils were heâ—…l at Tâ—…ibur in this Age of whose Acts we have little or no account left and therefore cannot 〈◊〉 the time of this Council The Synod of 〈◊〉 we shall mention afterwards when we come to the Affairs of England In the year 1080. Gregory the Seventh was condemned and deposed in the Council of Brixia as well for other crimes as because hâ—… had â—… Divorâ—…es between married persons to use the words of the Historian or had violently separated the married Clergy from their Wives To these we may add the Council of Beneventum held eleven years after by Urban the Second which permitted Marriage to Subdeacons as we before observed and the great Lateran Council under Innoâ—…ent the Third of which more hereafter If many Bishops disliked annulled and miâ—…igated the Papal Decrees of Celibacy with much morâ—… violence although with less authority did the inferiour Cleâ—…gy oppose this unjust Imposition Particularly 〈◊〉 Hildebrand published his Decrees the Historian saith The Clâ—…rgy were in a rage crying out the 〈◊〉 was plainly a Heretick and maintainer of mad Opinions who forgetting those words of Christ All 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tâ—…is and â—…e that cannot contain let him marry would by a violent exaction compel men to live the life of Angels and while he stopped the wonted course of Nature let loose the Reins to a promisâ—…uous Lust. 〈◊〉 the learned Monk of Gemblacâ—… writ to Henry Archdeacon of Leige a peculiar Tâ—…eatise or Apology against those who sâ—…andered or condemned the Masses of married Priests as himself tells us which is now lost The same Author in another place giveâ—…h this judgment of the Decree of Pope Gregory That it was made by an unheard-of Example and inconsiderate prejudice against the Doctrine of the Holy Fathers Matthew Paris useth the same words In Germany the Clergy opposed the Papal Decrees with great courage and animosity rejected the perswasion of their Bishops wanted little of tearing in pieces the Popes Legate who proposed to them the imposition of Celibacy and when at last by the violence of their Adversaries forced to submit chused rather to quit their Office than their Wives In France the Clergy of Laon rejected the Sollicitations of Petruâ—… Damiaâ—…i Of England we shall speak more largely afterwards In Italy Damiaâ—…us being sent to Milan by Nicolas the Second in the year 1059. to subject that See to the Obedience of the Church of Rome and the Clergy to the Yoak of Celibacy could effect neither without great commotions For as himself writ back to the Pope the people and Clergy contended with great heat that the Ambrosian See owed no Obedience to the Bishop of Rome and that the Law of Celibacy was unjust and intolerable Mr. Fox in his English Martyrology hath published two antient Latin Apologies for the Marriage of the Clergy under the name of Volusianus Bishop of Carthage both directed to Pope Nicolas The first which is short is nothing else but the Epistle of Huldericus before mentioned which hath been often published The second is far longer was never elsewhere published and seems to have been the Remonstrance or Apology of all the married Clergy of the Western Church offered to Pope Nicolas the Second and the other Bishops of the Church who endeavoured to impose Celibacy presently after the Roman Synod in the year 1059. which forbid the Laity to hear Mass from the married Clergy The Author of it writes far more elegantly and argues more strongly than Huldericus and indeed abating some allegorical interpretations of Scripture the peculiar Genius of those Ages it may be accounted a rational and exact Treatise The sum of it is this That Continence is the peculiar Gift of God not bestowed upon all which therefore cannot be commanded That no Vow or Gift is grateful to God but what is voluntary not compelled That it savoured of Judaism to impose such burdens upon men under the Gospel That the Governours of the Church were not invested with an arbitrary power nor could lay such grievous impositions on the Clergy against their will. That this Yoak was imposed for vain ostentation and worldly ends That although many of the inferiour Clergy were awed by Force Authority Threats or Anathema's to submit to this Imposition yet they unwillingly underwent the burden of Celibacy and hated the cross laid upon them because they bore it rather to their destruction than salvation That from the imposition of Celibacy greater inconveniencies arose Sodomy Adultery Fornication Incest and other horrid Lusts. That Marriage is the only Remedy assigned by God to incontinent persons which they who contemn and affect a greater shew of perfection commonly fall into precipices That the Apostle commandeth that to avoid Fornication every man
should have his own Wife and expresly teacheth all have not the Gift of Continence That the Apostles advice of Virginity was temporary himself professing that he cast no snare upon us That as for themselves they professed they could not contain without the use of Marriage and therefore by the Precept of the Apostle had a right to marry That it was a vain and false pretence that this Indulgence was given by the Apostle only to the Laity and not to the clergy That the Yoak of Celibacy was unlawful and intolerable condemned of old by Dionysius Corinthius and Paphnutius Lay not therefore we beseech you this heavy burden upon us which we are not able to bear nor violate the Reverence due to Holy Orders and the sacred Mysteries for our sakes Certainly you render both contemptible in the sight of men whilst you forbid the Sacraments to be received from our hands A Prohibition directly contrary to the antient Canons which define that the Sacraments lose not their efficacy by the unworthiness of him that administers them By these Authorities and Reasons you ought to be perswaded and neither remove us from the sacred Office nor deprive the Laity of the benefit of the Sacraments Concluding with a protestation that they could not contain without Marriage nor obtain Continence any otherwise than by the peculiar Gift of God. Thus the married Clergy wanted neither learning nor courage to defend the justice of their Cause and however they were overborn by the violence of the Court of Rome and prevailing interest of the Monastick Order yet many of them retained their Wives for some Ages after the times of Hildebrand although from his Popedom the marriage of the Clergy gradually decreased and at last was born down by an universal Celibacy For some time after that the Priests of Germany publickly cohabited with their Wives saith Aventinus as other Christians did and begat Children as appears from the Records of Grants made by them to Churches Priests or Monks wherein their Wives by name subscribe as Witnesses together with their Husbands and are called by the honest name of Priestesses This constancy of the Clergy in retaining their Wives was the only reason of the frequent renovations of the Laws of Celibacy by the Popes and Councils of the 12th and 13th Ages These Laws seem not to have been introduced into Dalmatia till the year 1199. when a Council being held there by the Popes Legates this Canon was made Whereas the Priests of God ought to live continently they are said to hold both their Wives and Churches in the parts of Dalmatia and Dioclia Wherefore we enact That Clergy-men having Wives married before Ordination live with them and resign their Benefices but that those who have Wives married after Ordination dismiss their Wives and retain their Benefices To pass by other Councils I will produce only the great Lateran Council under Innocent the Third in the year 1215. which not only allowed the Marriage of the Clergy when contracted to be valid but also permitted Marriage to the Clergy of some Provinces wherein the Laws of Celibacy had not yet been received The first appeareth from the 31 Canon conceived in these words To abolish a great Corruption which hath been introduced in divers Churches we straightly forbid that the Sons of Prebendaries especially their Bastard Sons be made Prebendaries in the secular Churches wherein their Fathers were instituted Where by excluding especially the Bastard Sons of the Clergy it is acknowledged that their Children born in Marriage are not Bastards The latter is no less evident from the 14th Canon which enjoyning Continence to the Clergy adds this Proviso But whereas many of the Clergy according to the custom of their Countries have not renounced their Wives if any of these commit Fornication or Adultery let them be more severely punished because they can make use of lawful Marriage The latter Writers of the Church of Rome to â—…lude the Authority of a Council so much reverenced by them declaring in favour of the Clergies Marriage would have this clause understood of the Greek Clergy but produce not the least shew of Reason for their pretence No mention is made of the Greek Clergy either before or after nor did the Fathers of the Council in forming this Canon any more dream of them than of the Clergy of the Abyssine Church Lastly almost the whole 17th Title of the first Book of Decretals of Gregory the Ninth is made up of Epistles written by Alexander the Second to the Bishops of England about admitting or not admitting the Sons of Priests into the Benefices of their Fathers without any intermediate Successour In these Epistles Bastardy is no-where objected to the Sons of the Clergy but only the danger which may accrew to the Church if Ecclesiastical Benefices should descend like a Lay Inheritance from Father to Son. And this danger the Pope sometimes dispensed with For it is manifest from the 9th Chapter that he had given a Faculty to the Archbishop of York of inducting the Sons of the Clergy into the Benefices of their Fathers immediately after the death or cession of the latter The 12th Chapter hath these words Clement III. to the Archbishop of Cassels Whereas your Brotherhood inquired of us the Sons of Priests or Bishops may be promoted to Holy Orders if they be adorned with knowledge and sobriety know that if they be born of lawful Marriage and there be no other Canonical Impediment they may lawfully ascend to Holy Orders Where it is manifest that the Sons of which Pope Clement speaks were born after the Ordination of their Fathers for none was ever so mad as to doubt whether the Sons of Clergy-men born before their Ordination were capable of Holy Orders But if any scruple remains the 14th Chapter will remove it which is this We understand that N. begotten in Priesthood born and conceived of a lawful Wife desires to be admitted into Holy Orders Wherefore let it be done Thus did Popes General Councils and the practice of the Church after the times of Hildebrand acknowledge the lawfulness of the Clergies Marriage and connive at it till the Papal ambition drawing the disposition of all Ecclesiastical Preferments to themselves and allowing the use of Concubines to the Clergy Marriage was at last forced to yield to the more advantageous and easie way of Fornication It remains that we speak somewhat more particularly of the state of Celibacy in the Church of England which more peculiarly concerns us and probably the last of all the Churches in the West submitted to the imposition of it The Church of England being no part of the Roman Patriarchate nor intervening by her Bishops in those Western Councils which enjoyned Celibacy took no notice of nor gave any obedience to the Decrees of Popes or Constitutions of Councils in that matter but allowed an uninterrupted freedom of Marriage to the whole body of her
Clergy till the end of the tenth Age and to the far greater part of them till the beginning of the twelfth Age. Elfric indeed a great Zealot of the Monastick Order in which he was brought up disliked and opposed the Marriage of the Clergy yet so that from his words it is manifest the Marriage of the Clergy generally obtained in England and himself rather wished than hoped for an abolition of it In opposing it he joyned the prejudices of Antiquity to the impostures of latter Ages From hence he received the poor pretence of the prohibition of Marriage to the Clergy by the Council of Nice in the third Canon from thence his detestation of second Marriages against which he had conceived such unreasonable prejudice that he forbid Priests to be present at the solemnities of those Marriages or even to bestow a blessing on them Nay the Clergy of the Church of England enjoyed at that time so great a liberty of Marriage that even the Monks enjoyed the same freedom and as the old Manuscript Chronicle of Winchester relateth all the Monasteries of England except Glastenbary and Abendon were nothing else but Colledges of married Priests till King Edgar drove them thence and planted Monks in them This was done by King Edgar about the year 974 at the instigation and by the artifices of Dunstan who held divers Synods for that purpose and had sharp disputes with the married Clergy possessing the Monasteries where his frequent recurring to tricks and impostures related by the Monkish Historians under the name of Miracles manifest that Reason and Justice failed him and that in both he was overpowered by the married Clergy But the favour of the Prince gave to Dunstan the advantage of obtaining his design who as Malmsbury relateth when he gave the Clergy their choice either to quit their Wives or their Monasteries forsook their Places and left them empty to the Monks Alferus indeed Prince of Mercia drove out the Monks again and replaced the married Clergy but they soon lost their recovered possession with the fall of that Prince However this Violence of Edgar and Constitutions of Dunstan touched not the Secular Clergy whether Parochial Priests or Prebendaries of Cathedral and Collegiate Churches They yet enjoyed the use of Marriage with no less perfect freedom than before And therefore among King Edgar's Canons one is that if a Mass-Priest commits Fornication or violate his Marriage he fast 10 years and always bewail his crime if a Deacon 7 years if an inferiour Clergyman 6 years if a Layman 5 years Not only the Secular Clergy but even many Regulars who lived separately out of Monasteries enjoyed then the benefit of Marriage as many Nuns do at this day in the Abyssine Church whence Sir Henry Spelman observeth that their Wives are frequently called Monachae and Moniales Nuns Afterwards Pope Gregory the Seventh imposing Celibacy upon the whole Clergy and seconding his imposition with reiteratâ—…d commands to all Bishops to execute his Decrees Lanfranc Archbishop of Canterbury endeavoured to introduce Celibacy into the Church of England But perceiving the attempt to be impossible by reason of the constant and unanimous opposition of the Clergy he was contented in the Council of Winchester in the year 1076. to make this Decree only Let no Prebendary have a Wife But of the Priests who live in Towns and Villages those who have Wives shall not be compelled to put them away those who have not shall be forbidden to marry any Thus Lanfranc prepared the way for the more resolute undertakings of his successour Anselm who not contented with a partial Celibacy attempted to debar the whole body of the Clergy from the use of Marriage which they had hitherto enjoyed So common and general was the Marriage of the Clergy in the Church of England at that time that Pope Paschal the Second in an Epistle to Anselm giving him a Dispensation to admit the Sons of the Clergy into Holy Orders assigns this reason of it because there is so great a number of this kind in the Kingdom of England that they make up the greater and better part of the Clergy And indeed many great and illustrious Members of the Clergy the sons of Priests who lived at this time in England may be produced out of History Herebertus Losinga Bishop of Norwich was the son of Robert Losinga a Clergyman afterwards Abbot of Winchester Rithmarch was son and successour of Sulgheim Bishop of St. Davids Thomas Archbishop of York was the son of a Norman Priest as also his brother Samson Bishop of Worcester whose son Thomas succeeded his Uncle in the Archbishoprick of York Henry Archdeacon of Huntington the Historian was the son of Nicolas Priest of Lincoln who for his great Piety and Learning was called The Star of the Clergy Richard Archdeacon of Coventry was the son and successour of Robert Bishop of Chester or of Coventry and Lichfield which See was then placed at Chester upon which Radulphus de Diceto maketh this observation Not therefore either from Sacred Orders or from Parochial Cures or from Bishopricks or from the Popedom it self are the Sons of the Clergy to be debarred if they be of an honest life It cannot be here imagined that all these persons were born before the ordination of their Fathers For first Clergymen were then ordained young and then the contrary can be plainly demonstrated of many of them For Eadmerus relates that Lanfranc going to Rome in the year 1071. impleaded Thomas Archbishop of York and Remigius Bishop of Lincoln before the Pope that neither of them were canonically promoted to their Bishopricks because they were the sons of Priests and consequently made incapable of Holy Orders by the Canons Which incapacity was never extended to the sons of the Clergy born before their ordination Besides the learned Selden observes there was no such express Canon then made nor ever heard of before the Council of Clermont in the year 1095. and therefore the incapacity of the sons of the Clergy to Holy Orders could arise only from their supposed bastardy being the fruits of the use of Marriage after ordination which the Hildebrandine Popes and Councils had defined to be fornication This was the state of the Clergies Marriage in the Church of England till the times of Anselm who being educated in a Monastery and a dependant of the Court of Rome endeavoured to introduce the Papal Laws of Celibacy into England His attempts of this kind I will represent in the words of our Historians Henry de Knyghton saith Anselm forbid Wives to the Clergy at Leicester in the year 1102. which before were not forbidden to them Simon Dunelmensis In the year 1102. Concubines or Wives were forbidden to Priests in the Synod of London Whence many of them shut up the doors of their Churches omitting all Divine Service Henry Huntindon In the year
Fornication Thus have we brought down the History of the Imposition of Celibacy to its Final Period I mean the Universal Reception of it in the Western Church towards the end of the Fourteenth Age when the Marriage of the Clergy fell from a general into a total disuse and was thenceforth compelled to take refuge in the name and disgrace of Fornication What a deluge of Lusts and Impurities overflowed the Christian World when Celibacy became triumphant and Marriage was exploded may easily be imagined Such deplorable Scandals of the Church I should willingly pass under silence and not provoke the anger of our Adversaries by the rehearsal of so sad a truth if the nature of my design did not require me to say somewhat of it which yet I will propose with all modesty and brevity I will not here upbraid to our Adversaries the noted Tragedy of Pope Gregory's Fish-ponds although related by Haldericus more than 800 years since nor the more famous story of Pope Joan although attested by more than twenty eight Historians before the Reformation I will not object to them the Incredible Bestialities and Horrible Lusts of the Popes of the Tenth Age nor insist upon the Infamous Impurities of private Churchmen I will produce only a few General Testimonies of the Writers of latter times Alvarus Pelagius Bishop of Silva in Portugal in the beginning of the Fourteenth Age wisheth that the Glergy had never vowed Chastity especially the Clergy of Spain wherein the Sons of the Laity were not much more numerous than the Sons of the Clergy About the same time Durandus junior Bishop of Mimatum in France proposing means for the reformation of the Church adviseth among other things that it were ordered that Publick Stews might not be kept near great Churches nor in the Court of Rome next to the Palace of the Pope nor in other Places near the Houses of Bishops In the next Age Gerson affirms that either incontinent Priests must be tolerated or none can be had and therefore that it were more convenient for the Church that Concubines should be publickly permitted to the Clergy than that the Lâ—…ity should be forbidden to hear the Masses of incontinent Priests Glemangis relates that in many Diocesses the Priests giving a set and determinate price to their Bishops publickly and openly kept Concubines This scandal of selling Licenses of Concubinacy to the Clergy proceeded so far that in Germany the Bishops and their Officers not only granted those Licences for a certain sum of money to all who asked them but also forced those Clergy-men to take them who neither desired noâ—… intended to make use of them In Switzerland it was the custom in many Cantons in the times of Popery that whensoever they received a new Pastour they obliged him to take a Concubine that he might not attempt the chastity of Virgins and Matrons The same reason induced the Senate of Rome when Pius V. intended to put down the publick Stews to intercede and petition for the continuation of them as well to gratifie the Clergy who incited them as to prevent greater scandals justly fearing the honour of their Wives and Daughters if the Lust of the unmarried Clergy were diverted from the wonted channel To say no more the Adulteries Fornications Sodomies and Bestialities discovered in our Monasteries at their dissolution are an evident demonstration of this sad truth The Author of Onus Ecclesiâ—… who was John Suffragan Bishop of Saltzburg and writ just before the Reformation saith There were very few Gurates in Germany who did not wallow in the filth of Conoubinacy and that The Nunneries in his time were as publickly prostituted as the common Stews And lest we should imagin the Romish Clergy to have observed a greater Purity since the Reformation than before the Fornications and Incest of Paul III. the Soâ—…omies of Julius III. and incestuous Commerce of Innocent X. with his Brothers Wife Olimpia are yet fresh in the memory of all men of the latter of which Abbot Gualdi confesfeth that the Histories of former Ages cannot produce a scandal so enormous or an unlawful love so immoderate which made him for her sake to forfeit both the Reputation of his Person and the Honour of the Church I will produce but one Example more but that related by the Doctors of the Sorbon and consequently undeniable to our Adversaries In a Visitation made in the year 1619. by the Bishop of Serzane at the command of Pope Paul V. it was found that among the Ecclesiasticks of three large Provinces Stiria Carinthia and Carniola who had all been bred up under the severe Discipline of the Jesuits there were found only six Priests who kept not Concubines Nor did the imposition of Celibacy infect only the Morals of the Roman Clergy but also corrupted their judgment and by that means introduced far greater scandals into the Church when Concubinacy and other unnatural Lusts being become universal they employed their Wits to prevent their own shame by proving those Villanies not to be unlawful For to pass by an Encomium or Apology of Sodomy published by John Casa Archbishop of Beneventum and Legate of the Pope to omit the Complaint of Gualter Mapes That the Priests insinuated into silly women a fear of damnation if they denied their Embraces to them it cannot be denied that many latter Casuists of the Church of Rome have asserted That Fornication committed only for the sake of Health or evacuation of an extimulant Humour is not unlawful and that most of them teach that simple Fornication is no deadly sin I will alledge only one instance of these scandalous Maxims but that proceeding from the Head of the Romish Church and related by Wesselus of Groningen a learned and pious Divine of that Church Pope Sixtus IV. out of the fulness of Apostolick power gave a License to the whole Family of the Cardinal of St. Lucia to commit Sodomy in the three hotter months of the year with this clause Let it be done as it is desired The sense and scandal of so many Lusts Impurities and Bestialities daily committed by the unmarried Clergy induced many great and learned men of the Church of Rome to advise the abrogation of the Laws of Celibacy and permission of Marriage to the Clergy Panormitan giveth his opinion in these words It is enquired whether the present Church can enact that a Clergy-man may contract Marriage as the Greeks do I answer It may And I do not only believe that the Church hath a power of decreeing this but I also believe that this would be a wholsom Constitution for the good and salvation of Souls Pope Pius II. confessed That there were indeed former causes why Marriage should be taken from the Clergy but now much greater causes why it ought to be restored Polydor Vergil delivers his Judgment thus This I will affirm That this enforced Chastity