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ART. In the next place it may be justly doubted, whether the XXXII. church can make a law that shall restrain all the clergy in any

of those natural rights in which Christ has left them free. The adding a law upon this head to the laws of Christ, seems to assume an authority that he has not given the church. It looks like a pretending to a strain of purity beyond the rules set us in the gospel: and is plainly the laying a yoke upon us, which must be thought tyrannical, since the Author of this religion, who knew best what human nature is capable of, and what it may well bear, has not thought fit to lay it on those whom he sent upon a commission that required a much greater elevation of soul, and more freedom from the entanglements of worldly or domestic concerns, than can be pretended to be necessary for the standing and settled offices in the church. Therefore we conclude, that it were a great abuse of church power, and a high act of tyranny, for any church, or any age of the church, to bar men from the services in the church, because they either are married, or intend to keep themselves free to marry, or not, as they please: this does indeed bring the body of the clergy more into a combination among themselves; it does take them in a great measure off from having separated interests of their own; it takes them out of the civil society, in which they have less concern, when they give no pledges to it. And so in ages in which the papacy intended to engage the whole priesthood into its interests against the civil powers, as the immunity and exemptions of the clergy made them safe in their own persons, so it was necessary to free them from any such incumbrances or appendages by which they might be in the power or at the mercy of secular princes. This, joined with the belief of their making God with a few words, by the virtue of their character, and of their forgiving sin, was like armour of proof, by which they were invulnerable, and by consequence capable of undertaking any thing that might be committed to them. But this may well recommend such a rule to a crafty and designing body of men, in which it is not to be denied, that there is a deep and refined policy; yet we 'have not so learned Christ,' nor to handle the word of God,' or the authority that he has trusted to us, deceitfully.

If

As for the consequences of such laws, inconveniences are on both hands as long as men are corrupt themselves, so long they will abuse all the liberties of human nature. not only common lewdness in all the kinds of it, but even brutal and unnatural lusts, have been the visible consequences of the strict law of celibate; and if this appears so evident in history that it cannot be denied; we think it better to trust human nature with the lawful use of that in which God has not restrained it, than to venture on that which has given occasion to abominations that cannot be mentioned without horror. As for the temptation to covetousness, we think it is

neither so great, nor so unavoidable, upon the one hand, as ART. those monstrous ones are on the other. It is more reasonable XXXII. to expect divine assistances to preserve men from temptations, when they are using those liberties which God has left free to them, than when, by pretending to a purity greater than that which he has commanded, they throw themselves into many snares. It is also very evident, that covetousness is an effect of men's tempers, rather than of their marriage; since the instances of a ravenous covetousness, and of a restless ambition, in behalf of men's kindred and families, hath appeared as often and as scandalously among the unmarried as among the married clergy.

From these general considerations concerning the power that the church has to make either a perpetual or an universal law in a thing of this kind; I shall, in the next place, consider, in short, what the church has done in this matter. In the first ages of Christianity, Basilides and Saturninus, and after them, both Montanus and Novatus, and the sect of the Encratites, condemned marriage as a state of libertinism that was unbecoming the purity required of Christians. Against those we find the fathers asserted the lawfulness of marriage to all Christians, without making a difference between the clergy and the laity. It is true, the appearances that were in Montanus and his followers seem to have engaged the Christians of that age to strain beyond them in those things that gave them their reputation: many of Tertullian's writings, that critics do now see were writ after he was a Montanist, which seems not to have been observed in that age, carry the matter of celibate so high, that it is no wonder, if, considering the reputation that he had, a bias was given by these to the following ages in favour of celibate: yet it seemed to give great and just prejudices against the Christian religion, if such as had come into the service of the church should have forsaken their wives. It is visible how much scandal this might have given, and what matter of reproach it would have furnished their enemies with, if they could have charged them with this, that men, to get rid of their wives, and the care of their families, went into orders; that so, under a pretence of a higher degree of sanctity, they might abandon their families. Therefore great care was taken to prevent this. They were so far from requiring priests to forsake their wives, that such as did it, upon their entering into orders, were severely condemned by the canons that go under the name of the Apostles. They were also condemned by the council of Gangra in the fourth century, and by that of Trullo in the seventh age. There are some instances brought of bishops and priests, who are supposed to have married after they were ordained; but as there are only few of those, so perhaps they are not well proved. It must be acknowledged, that the general practice was, that men once in orders did not marry: but many bishops in the

ART. best ages lived still with their wives. So did the fathers both XXXII. of Gregory Nazianzen and of St. Basil. And among the works of Hilary of Poictiers, there is a letter writ by him in exile to his daughter Abra, in which he refers her to her mother's instruction in those things which she, by reason of her age, did not then understand; which shews that she was then very young, and so was probably born after he was a bishop.

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Some proposed in the council of Nice, that the clergy should Eccl. lib. i. depart from their wives; but Paphnutius, though himself unmarried, opposed this, as the laying an unreasonably heavy yoke upon them. Heliodorus, a bishop, the author of the first of those love-fables that are now known by the name of Romances, being upon that account accused of too much levity, did, in order to the clearing himself of that imputation, move that clergymen should be obliged to live from their wives. Which the historian says they were not tied to before; for till then bishops lived with their wives. So that in those days the living in a married state was not thought unbecoming the purity of the sacred functions. A single marriage was never objected in bar to a man's being made bishop or priest. They did not indeed admit a man to orders that been twice married; but even for this there was a distinction: if a man had been once married before his baptism, and was once married after his baptism, that was reckoned only a single marriage; for what had been done when in heathenism went for nothing. And Jerome, speaking of bishops who had been twice married, but by this nicety were reckoned to be the husbands of one wife, says, 'the number of those of this sort in that time could not be reckoned; and that more such bishops might be found, than were at the council of Arimini.' Canons grew to be frequently made against the marriage of those in holy orders; but these were positive laws made chiefly in the Roman and African synods; and since those canons were so often renewed, we may from thence conclude that they were not well kept. When Synesius was ordained priest, he tells in an Epistle of his, that he declared openly, that he would not live secretly with his wife, as some did; but that he would dwell publicly with her, and wished that he might have many children by her. In the eastern church the priests are usually married before they are ordained, and continue afterwards to live with their wives, and to have children by them, without either censure or trouble. In the western church we find mention made, both in the Gallican and Spanish synods, of the wives both of bishops and priests; and they are called episcopa and presbyteræ. In the Saxon times the clergy in most of the cathedrals of England were openly married: and when Dunstan, who had engaged king Edgar to favour the monks, in opposition to the married clergy, pressed them to forsake their wives, they refused to do it, and so were turned

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out of their benefices, and monks came in their places. Nor ART. was the celibate generally imposed on all the clergy before Gregory the Seventh's time, in the end of the eleventh century. He had great designs for subjecting all temporal princes to the papacy; and, in order to that, he intended to bring the clergy into an entire dependance upon himself; and to separate them wholly from all other interests but those of the ecclesiastical authority: and that he might load the married clergy with an odious name, he called them all Nicolaitans; though the accounts that the ancients give us of that sect say nothing that related to this matter: but a name of an ill sound goes a great way in an ignorant age. The writers that lived near that time condemned this severity against the married clergy, as a new and a rash thing, and contrary to the mind of the holy fathers; and they tax his rigour in turning them all out. Yet Lanfranc among us did not impose the celibate generally on all the clergy, but only on those that lived at cathedrals and in towns; he connived at those who served in villages. Anselm carried it further, and imposed it on all the clergy without exception: yet he himself laments that unnatural lusts were become then both common and public; of which Petrus Damiani made great complaints in Gregory the Seventh's time. Bernard, in a sermon preached to the clergy of France, says it was common in his time, and then even bishops with bishops lived in it. The observation that abbot Panormitan made of the progress of that horrid sin, led him to wish that it might be left free to the clergy to marry as they pleased. Pius the Second said, that there might have been good reasons for imposing the celibate on the clergy; but he believed there were far better reasons for leaving them to their liberty. As a remedy to these more enormous crimes, dispensations for concubinate became so common, that, instead of giving scandal by them, they were rather considered as the characters of modesty and temperance; in such concubinary priests the world judged themselves safe from practices on their own families.

When we consider those effects that followed on the imposing the celibate on the clergy, we cannot but look on them as much greater evils than those that can follow on the leaving it free to them to marry. It is not to be denied but that, on the other hand, the effects of a freedom to marry may be likewise bad: that state does naturally involve men in the cares of life, in domestic concerns, and it brings with it temptations both to luxury and covetousness. It carries with it too great a disposition to heap up wealth, and to raise families; and, in a word, it makes the clergy both look too like, and live too like, the rest of the world. But when things of this kind are duly balanced, ill effects will appear on both hands: those arise out of the general corruption of human nature, which does so spread itself, that it will corrupt us in the

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most innocent, and in the most necessary practices. There are excesses committed in eating, drinking, and sleeping. Our depraved inclinations will insinuate themselves into us in our best actions: even the public worship of God and all devotion receive a taint from them. But we must not take away those liberties in which God has left human nature free, and engage men to rules and methods that put a violence upon mankind: this is the less excusable, when we see, in fact, what the consequences of such restraints have been for many ages.

Yet after all, though they who marry, do well;' yet those 'who marry not, do better,' provided they live chaste, and do not burn. That man, who subdues his body by fasting and prayer, by labour and study, and that separates himself from Acts vi. 4. the concerns of a family, that he may give himself wholly to the ministry of the word, and to prayer,' that lives at a distance from the levities of the world, and in a course of native modesty and unaffected severity, is certainly a burning and shining light: he is above the world, free from cares and designs, from aspirings, and all those restless projects which have so long given the world so much scandal: and therefore those, who allow themselves the liberty of marriage, according to the laws of God and the church, are indeed engaged in a state of many temptations, to which if they give way, they lay themselves open to many censures, and they bring a scandal on the Reformation for allowing them this liberty, if they abuse it.

It remains only to consider how far this matter is altered by vows; how far it is lawful to make them; and how far they bind when they are made. It seems very unreasonable and tyrannical to put vows on any, in matters in which it may not be in their power to keep them without sin. No vows ought to be made, but in things that are either absolutely in our power, or in things in which we may procure to ourselves those assistances that may enable us to perform

We have a federal right to the promises that Christ has made us, of inward assistances to enable us to perform those conditions that he has laid on us; and therefore we may vow to observe them, because we may do that which may procure us aids sufficient for the execution of them. But if men will take up resolutions, that are not within those necessary conditions, they have no reason to promise themselves such assistances: and if they are not so absolutely masters of themselves, as to be able to stand to them without those helps, and yet are not sure that they shall be given them, then they ought to make no vow in a matter which they cannot keep by their own natural strength, and in which they have not any promise in the gospel that assures them of divine assistances to enable them to keep it. This is, therefore, a tempting of God, when men pretend to serve him by assuming a stricter course of life than either he has com

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