five. The ablest critics, however, such as Du Pin, Beveridge, Albaspinæus and Giannon, have regarded them as a collection of canons, selected from synods prior to the council of Nice in 325. This seems to be the true statement. The canons are often cited by the councils and authors of the fourth century. John of Antioch inserted them in his collection in the reign of Justinian, and the emperor himself eulogized them in his sixth novel; whilst their authority, at a later date, was acknowledged by Damascen, Photius and the seventh general council.*

The celibacy of the clergy, however, in consequence of the march of superstition, obtained, at length, in the west, though always rejected in eastern Christendom. The mind of superstition seems inclined to ascribe superior holiness to virginity and celibacy, and to venerate abstinence of this kind with blind devotion. Men, therefore, in all ages, have endeavoured to draw attention by pretensions to this species of self-denial and its fancied purity, and abstraction from sublunary care and enjoyment. Its votaries, in every age, have, by an affected singularity and ascetic contempt of pleasure, contrived to attract the eye of superstition, deceive themselves or amuse a silly world. This veneration for celibacy has appeared through the nations, and in the systems of paganism, heresy and Romanism. Clerical celibacy is the child, not of religion or Christianity, but of superstition and policy.

Austerity of life and abstinence from lawful as well as unlawful gratifications, the heathen accounted the summit of perfection. The Romans, during their profession of Gentilism, though their Pontifex Maximus was a married man, had their vestal virgins, who possessed extraordinary influence and immunity. The Athenian hierophants, according to Jerome's expression, unmanned themselves by drinking cold hemlock. Becoming priests, they ceased to be men. The Egyptian priesthood observed similar continency. These, says Cheremon the Stoic, quoted by Jerome, were induced,

* Du Pin, c. 10. Giannon, II. 8. Cotel. 1. 429.442.

for the purpose of subduing the body, to forego the use of flesh, wine, and every luxury of eating and drinking, which might pamper passion or awaken concupiscence. The priests of Cybele, in like manner, in entering on their office, vanquished the enemy by mutilation.

The Gnostic and Manichean systems also declared against matrimony and in favour of celibacy. The Manicheans, indeed, according to Augustine, allowed their auditors, who occupied the second rank, to marry, but refused the same liberty to the elect, who aimed at the primary honours of purity. The grovel ing many, who were contented with mediocrity, indulged in nuptial enjoyments, whilst the chosen few, who aspired at perfection, renounced these degrading gratifications, and rose to the sublimity of self-denial and spirituality.*

Popery followed the footsteps of hea thenism and heresy. The imperfect laity, like the Manichean auditors, may attach themselves to the other sex, and enjoy connubial gratifications. But the clergy and sisterhood, who aim at perfection, must, like the Manichean elect, soar to the grandeur of abstinence and virginity.

This admiration of virginity began at an early period of Christianity. Ignatius, who was the companion of the inspired messengers of the Gospel, commenced, in his epistolary address to Polycarp in the beginning of the second century, to eulogize, though in very measured language, the haughty virgins of the day. This affectation of holiness, which was then in its infancy, had presumed to rear its head above unpretending and humble purity. Ignatius was followed by Justin and Athenagoras: but still in the language of moderation. Their encomiums, however, were general, and had no particular reference to the clergy. Tertul lian, led astray by the illusions of Mont anism, forsook the moderation of Ignatius, Justin and Athenagoras, and extolled virginity to the sky. He exhausted language in vilifying marriage and praising celibacy. Tertullian, in his flattery of this mock purity, was equalled or excelled

* Jerom. 4. 192. Bruys, 1. 142. Moreri, 4. 142. Augustin, 1. 739. et 8. 14.

by Origen, Chrysostom, Augustine, Basil, Ambrosius, Jerome, Syricius, Innocent and Fulgentius. These saints and pontiffs represented virginity as the excellence of Christianity, and viewed with admiration the system which Paul of Tarsus, under the inspiration of God, characterized as a "doctrine of devils."

The reason of this admiration may be worth an investigation. One reason arose from the difficulty of abstinence. Virginity, Jerome admits, "is difficult and therefore rare." The monk of Palestine was a living example of this difficulty. Sitting, the companion of scorpions, in a frightful solitude, parched with the rays of the sun, clothed in sackcloth, pale with fasting, and quenching his thirst only from the cold spring, the saint, in his own confession, wept and groaned, while "his blood boiled with the flames of licentiousness." Bernard prescribes "fasting, as a necessary remedy for the wantonness of the flesh and the inflammation of the blood." Chrysostom makes similar concessions of difficulty. The passion indeed, which prompts the matrimonial union, being necessary for the continuation of the species, has, by the Creator, been deeply planted in the breast, and forms an essential part of the constitution. The prohibition is high treason against the laws of God, and open rebellion against the spring tide of human nature and the full flow of human affection. An attempt, therefore, to stem the irresistible current must ever recoil with tremendous effect on its authors. But the affectation of singularity, the show of sanctity and the profession of extraordinary attainments, which outrage the sentiments of nature, will, like Phaeton's attempt to drive the chariot of the sun, attract the gaze of the spectator, gain the applause of superstition and figure in the annals of the world.

Jerome and Chrysostom, quoted by the Rhemists, say that continency may always be obtained by prayer. The attainment, according to the Grecian and Roman saint, is the uniform reward of sup

Ignat. c. 5. Cotel. ii. 92. Justin, 22. Jerome, 4. 30.177. Bernard, 1114. Chrysostom, 1. 249.

plication to heaven. Theodolf makes a similar statement. But the allegation of Jerome and Chrysostom as well as Theodolf, is the offspring of inconsistency and wholly incompatible with their usual sentiments. Chrysostom, like Jerome, gives, in another place, a different view of the votaries of virginity in his day. Some of these, to counteract the movements of the flesh, cased the body in steel, put on sackcloth, ran to the mountains, spent night and day in fasting, vigils and in all the rigor of severity. Shunning the company of women, the whole sex were forbidden access to their solitary retreat. All this self-mortification, however, could scarcely allay the rebellion of their blood.* The relation must convey a singular idea of these victims of superstition and the manners of the age. The portrait is like the representation of a Lucian or Swift, who, in sarcastic irony, would ridicule the whole transaction; while it displays, in striking colours, the difficulty of the attempt as well as the folly of the system.

The difficulty of continence, if reports may be credited, was not peculiar to Chrysostom's day. Succeeding saints felt the arduousness of the mighty attempt. A few instances of this may amuse, as exemplified in the lives of Francis, Godric, Ulfric, Aquinas, Benedict, an Irish priest, the maid of Burgundy, the Bishop of Sherburn, and related by Bonaventura, Paris, Malmesbury, Mabillon, Ranolfand the Roman Breviary.

The seraphic Francis, who flourished in the thirteenth century, was the father of the Franciscans. The saint, though devoted to chastity and brimful of the spirit, was, it seems, sometimes troubled with the movements of the flesh. An enemy that wrought within was difficult to keep in subjection. His saintship, however, on these occasions, adopted an effectual way of cooling the internal flame, and allaying the carnal conflict. He stood, in winter, to the neck in a pit full of icy water. One day, being attacked in an extraordinary manner by the demon of sensuality, he stripped naked, and belaboured his unfortunate back with a disci

plinarian whip: and then leaving his cell, he buried his body, naked as it was, in a deep wreath of snow. The cold bath, the knotted thong and the snowy bed were necessary for discharging the superabundant caloric of his saintship's constitution.

Godric, an English hermit, was troubled with the same complaint and had recourse to the same remedy. He was a native of Norfolk, but had visited Jerusalem, wept over the sacred sepulchre, and kissed, in holy devotion, the tomb of Emmanuel and the monument of redemption. He lived on the banks of the Werus, and was the companion of the bear and the scorpion, which were gentle and obliging to the man of God. But he had to contend, even in his solitude, with temptation. Satan, assuming the form of a lion or a wolf, endeavoured to allure him from his duty. These outward trials, however, were nothing compared with the inward conflicts, arising from the ferment of concupiscence and "the lusts of the flesh." He counteracted the rebellion of his blood, however, by the rigour of discipline. The cold earth was his only bed, and a stone, which he placed under his head, was his nightly pillow. The herb of the field, and the water of the spring, were his meat and drink, which he used only when compelled by the assaults of hunger and thirst. Clothed in hair-cloth, he spent his days in tears and fasting. The hermit, with these applications for keeping the body under, used a sufficiently cooling regimen. During the wintry frost and snow, he immersed himself, says his historian, in the stream of the Werus, where, pouring forth prayers and tears, he offered himself a living victim to God. The flesh, it is likely, after this nightly dip, was discharged of all unnecessary heat and became duly cool. But the devil, it seems, played some pranks on the hermit while he was enjoying the cold bath and freezing his body for the good of his soul. Satan sometimes ran away with Godric's clothes, which were on the banks. But Godric terrified Beelzebub

* Bruy. 3. 151. Moreri, 4. 179. †M. Paris, 114. Beda, 741.

with shouts, so that, affrighted, he dropped his hair cloth garment and fled. A relic of Godric's heard, says Bede, was, after his death, transferred to Durham and adorned the church of that city.

Ulric's history is of a similar kind. He was born near Bristol, and fought the ene mies of the human race for twenty-nine years. He was visited, notwithstanding, by the demon of licentiousness. The holy man, in his distress, applied the remedy of fasting and vigils, and endea voured to subdue the stimulations of the flesh by the regimen of the cold bath. He fasted till the skin was the only remaining covering of his bones. He nightly descended into a vessel filled with freezing water and, during the hours of darkness, continued, in this comfortable lodging, which constituted his head-quar ters, to sing the Psalms of David.* This Christian discipline, in all probability, delivered his veins of all superfluous caloric, and enabled him to practise moderation during the day.

Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor, required angelic aid to counteract the natural disposition of the mind or rather the flesh. He was born of a noble family, and enjoyed the benefit of a Parisian education. His friends opposed, but in vain, his resolution of immuring himself in the retreats of monkery. He resisted their attempts with signal success, though, it seems, not always with spiritual weapons. He chased one woman, who opposed his resolution, with a fire-brand. The blessed youth, says the Roman Breviary, praying on bended knees before the cross, was seized with sleep, and seemed, through a dream, "to undergo a constriction of a certain part by angels, and lost, from that time forward, all sense of concupis cence." His angelic saintship's natural propensity required supernatural power to restrain its fury. The grasp of angels was necessary to allay his carnality and confer continence.

Benedict, in his distress, had recourse to a pointed remedy. The saint, like Aquinas, was born of a noble family. He was educated at Rome, and devoted himself wholly to religion or rather to super† Brev. Rom. 702.

• M. Paris, 89.

stition. He lived three years in a deep cave; and, in his retreat, wrought many miracles. 66 "He knocked the devil out of one monk with a blow of his fist, and out of another with the lash of a whip." But Satan, actuated by malice and envious of human happiness, appeared to Benedict in the form of a blackbird, and renewed, in his heart, the image of a woman whom he had seen at Rome. The devil, in this matter, rekindled the torch of passion, and excited such a conflagration in the flesh, that the saint nearly yielded to the temptation. But he soon, according to Mabillon and the Roman Breviary, discovered a remedy. Having undressed h.mself, he rolled his naked body on nettles and thorns till the lacerated carcass, through pain, lost all sense of pleasure."* The father of the Benedictines, it appears, had his own difficulty in attempting to allay the ferment of the flesh, notwithstanding the allegations of Jerome and Chrysostom.

66

An Irish priest, actuated, like Francis, Godric, Ulric, Aquinas and Benedict, by a carnal propensity, had recourse to a different remedy. The holy man lived near Patrick's purgatory, in Ireland, and spent his days in official duty and in works of charity. Rising early each morning, he walked round the adjoining cemetery, and preferred his orisons for those whose mortal remains there mouldered in the clay, and mingled with their kindred dust. His devotion, however, did not place him beyond the reach of temptation. Satan, envying his happiness and hating his sanctity, tempted the priest in the form of a beautiful girl. He was near yielding to the allurement. He led the tempter into his bedchamber, when, recollecting himself, he resolved to prevent the sinful gratification for the present and in futurity. He seized a scalpellum, and adopting, like Origen, the remedy of amputation, he incapacitated himself for such sensuality in time to come.t

Adhelm, Bishop of Sherburn, had two ways of subduing the insurrections of the

flesh. One consisted in remaining, durt ing the winter, in a river which ran pashis monastery. He continued, for nights, immersed in this stream, regardless of the icy cold. The frosty bath, in all probability, extracted the superfluous and troublesome warmth from his veins, and stopped the ebullition of his rebellious blood. But the other remedy seems to have been rather a dangerous experiment. When the pulse began to beat high, his saintship called for a fair virgin, who lay in his bed till he sung the whole order of the Psalms, and overcame, by this means, the paroxysm of passion.* The sacred music and this beautiful maid, who, notwithstanding her virginity, was very accommodating, soothed the irritation of the flesh, and castigated the oscillations of the pulse till it beat with philosophical precision and Christian regularity.

A second reason for the preference of virginity arose from the supposed pollution of matrimony. Great variety, indeed, has, on this subject, prevailed among the saints and the theologians of Romanism. Some have represented marriage as a means of purity, and some of pollution. Clemens, Augustine, Ambrosius, Chrysostom, Fulgentius, Harding and Calmet characterize this Romish sacrament as an institution of holiness, sanctity, honour and utility. The Council of Gangra anathematized all who should reproach wedlock and this sentence has been incorporated with the canon law.† Augustine, Chrysostom, Ambrosius and Fulgentius, however, in self-contradiction, sometimes speak of the matrimonial institution in terms of invective and detestation.

Many saints, doctors, pontiffs and councils, on the contrary, such as Origen, Jerome, Siricius, Innocent, Bellarmine, Estius, Pithou, the canon law, the Rhemish annotators and a party in the Council of Trent, have represented this Popish sacrament, especially in the clergy, as an appointment of pollution and degrada

* Ranolf, 245. Malmsbury, 13. Wharton,

2. 13.

+ Clem. Strom. III. P. 559. Aug. con. Pelag. 10. 270. Amb. 2. 364. in Corin. VII. Chrysos. 1. 38. Fulg. ad Gall. Calmet, 23. 776. Labb. 2. 427. Crabb. 1. 289. Pithou, 42.

tion.*

Origen, who is quoted by Pithou, reckoned conjugal intercourse inconsistent with the presence of the Holy Spirit." Jerome, if possible, surpassed Origen in bitterness. The monk of Palestine growled at the very name of matrimony, and discharged against the institution, in all its bearings, whole torrents of vituperation and sarcasm. Surcharged, as usual, with gall and wormwood, which flowed in copious efflux from his pen, the saint poured vials of wrath on this object of his holy aversion. Marriage, according to this casuist, "effeminates the manly mind." A man, says the monk, “cannot pray unless he refrain from conjugal enjoyments." The duty of a husband is, in his creed, incompatible with the duty of a Christian." This is a sample of his acrimony. Those who would relish a full banquet, may read his precious production against Jovinian.

Siricius, the Roman pontiff, called marriage filthy, and characterized married persons "as carnal and incapable of pleasing God." Innocent adopted his predecessor's language and sentiment, and denounced this Romish sacrament as a contamination. Conjugal cohabitation, says Bellarmine, is attended with impurity, "and carnalizes the whole man, soul and body." Estius affirms that "the nuptial bed immerses the whole soul in carnality." Gratian and Pithou incorporate, in the canon law, the theology of Origen, which represents the matrimonial sacrament as calculated to quench the Spirit. The statements of the Rhemists are equally gross and disgusting. Wedlock, according to these dirty annotators, is a continued scene of sensuality and pollution. The marriage of the clergy, or of persons who have made vows of chastity, is, these theologians aver, the worst kind of fornication. A faction in the Council of Trent characterized marriage, which they defined to be a sacrament, as "a state of carnality;" and these received no reprehension from the holy, unerring assembly.

The abettors of Romanism, in this

Origen, Hom. 6. in Pithou, 383. Jerome,

4. 170. Jerome, 4. 150, 175. Siricius ad Him. Crabb. 1. 417, 456. Bell. 1. 18, 19. Estius, 252. Paolo, 2. 449. Rhemists on Corin. vii.

manner, condemn the conjugal sacrament as an abomination. These theologians, on this topic, entertained the grossest conceptions. Their own filthy ideas rose no higher than the gratification of the mere animal passion, unconnected with refinement or delicacy. Their views, on this subject, were detached from all the comminglings of the understanding and the heart, and from all the endearments of father, mother and child. Their minds turned only on scenes of gross sensuality, unallied to any moral or sentimental feeling, and insulated from all the reciproca tions of friendship or affection. Celibacy and virginity, which were unassociated with these carnal gratifications and which affected a superiority to their allurements became, with persons of this disposition, the objects of admiration.

Matrimony, however, though it were gross as the conceptions of these authors, is far purer than their language. The sentiments and phraseology of the Roman saints on virginity are, in point of obscenity, beyond all competition. The diction as well as the ideas of Chrysostom, Jerome, Augustine and Basil, would call the burning blush of shame into the cheek of a Juvenal, a Horace, an Ovid, or a Petronius. Chrysostom, though disgusting, is, indeed, less filthy than Jerome, Augustine or Basil. Jerome, bursting with fury against wedlock, follows in the footsteps of Chrysostom, and im proves, but the wrong way, on the Grecian's indecency. Augustine, in pollution, excels both Chrysostom and Jerome. But Basil, in impurity, soars above all rivalry, and, transcending Chrysostom, Jerome and Augustine, fairly carries off the palm of filthiness. The unalloyed obscenity of Chrysostom, Jerome and Augustine, rises, in the pages of Basil. to concentrated blackguardism. Du Pin confesses that Basil's treatise on virginity contains "some passages which may offend nice ears." Basil's Benedictine editor admits its tendency to sully maiden modesty with images of indecency.*

These saints must have had a practical acquaintance with the subject, to which they have done so much justice in de

* Basil, 3. 588. Du Pin, 1. 224.