IN turning thought to the history of the fight for the celibacy of the priesthood of the Roman-Catholic Church, one is impressed with the truth that what is unwritten and is known only to God, and is remembered by him, is far more terrible and atrocious than what is written. Up to the present time no one has dared to put into English the truth concerning celibacy. It blackens the page of history, it degrades peoples, curses the home, and spreads its blight over every hope and aspiration of those who rest under its shadow, or are afflicted by its presence.

Celibacy is in direct antagonism to the teachings of the word of God. That ought to be sufficient with people who believe that the word of God is a lamp to our feet, and a light to our path.

"A bishop," says Paul, "must be blameless, the husband of one wife. "' In the Douay Version is this note on the words "the husband of one wife:" The meaning is ' "that no one should be admitted to the holy orders of bishop, priest, or deacon, who had been married more than once. " Then, surely, it is not the meaning that a bishop priests, or deacon should never be married. Peter led about a wife. For more than three centuries every pastor of the church was allowed to marry.

Pope Siricius, 384, 398, first enjoined the celibacy of the clergy, and attempted to harden into inflexible statute that which had been left before to usage and opinion. Marriage was by him interdicted, and he wrote in the tone of one who supposed the usages of the Church of Rome were to be received as those of Christendom. This law, while it implied the ascendancy of monastic opinions showed likewise that there was a large part of the clergy who could only be coerced into celibacy by law. Temporary concessions were made to those who confessed it was a fault, but pleaded ignorance of the statute. This law was one of the characteristics of Latin Christianity. It separated the sacerdotal order from the rest of society, from the common human sympathies, interests and affections. It justified them to themselves in assuming a dignity superior to the rest of mankind, and secured their title to enforce acknowledgment and reverence for that superior dignity. The monastic principle, admitting virtually, at least, almost to its full extent the Manichean tenet of the innate sinfulness of all sexual intercourse as partaking of the inextinguishable impurity of matter, was gradually wrought into the general feeling.

Whether marriage was treated as in itself an evil, perhaps to be tolerated, but still degrading to human nature, as by Jerome and the more ascetic teachers; or honored, as by Augustine, with specious adulation, only to exalt virginity to a still loftier height above it, the clergy were taught to assert it at once as a privilege, as a distinction, as the consummation and the testimony to the sacredness of their order. Notwithstanding this, the celibacy of the clergy was openly opposed. In some regions the married clergy formed the majority, and, always supporting married bishops by their suffrages and influence, kept up a formidable succession. Throughout the whole period, from Pope Siricius to the Reformation, the law was defied, infringed, eluded.

"The married clergy were the more moral, though accused of living in concubinage." This was the least evil.

Celibacy, which was the vital energy of the clergy, was, at the same time, their fatal irremediable weakness. One-half, at least a large portion, of humankind could not cease to be humankind. The universal voice, which arraigns the state of morals as regards sexual intercourse among the clergy, is not that of their enemies only: it is their own. The unmarried clergy were distinguished for their licentiousness. "Henry, Bishop of Liege, was a monster of depravity. His lust was promiscuous. He kept as a concubine a Benedictine abbess. He boasted in a public banquet that in twenty-two months he had fourteen children born. This was not the worst: there was foul incest, and with nuns."

Hardly less repulsive, in some respects more so, as it embraces the clergy and some of the convents of a whole province, is the disclosure, as undeniable and authentic, of sacerdotal morals, in the Register of the Visitations of Eudes Rigaud, Archbishop of Rouen, from 1248-1269. There is one convent of females which might almost have put Boccaccio to the blush." Nepotism became at once the strength and the infirmity, the glory and shame, of the Papacy. This is not different at this hour. In one of our cities, as terrible charges are made against a. late bishop as any that were brought against the Bishop of Liege.

It is painful to reflect at how early a period unscriptural notions in relation to celibacy and marriage began to prevail among the professed followers of Christ. These scriptural opinions were owing in part to the superstitious notions which began to prevail at a very early period, in relation to the influence of malignant demons. It was the general opinion eat married men were more under their influence than celibates. The natural consequence was, unmarried men were regarded as far more suitable for the office of the sacred ministry than such as had contracted the defilement of matrimony.

protested against this shocking fanaticism, pointing it out as a characteristic of Antichrist, and of the apostasy of the latter days, that there should be those who would forbid to marry, and command to abstain from meats. "What!" says he, "may not self-command be preserved under the conditions of married life? May not marriage be. used, and yet continence be respected, without our attempting to sever that which the Lord hath joined? God allows every man, whether he be bishop, priest, or deacon, to be the husband of one wife, and to use matrimony, and not be liable to censure. "

was terrific. In 960 the former Abbot of Glastonbury was made Archbishop of Canterbury, and, assured of the favor of King Edgar, prepared to execute the grand design which he had long meditated, --of compelling the secular canons to put away their wives, and become monks; or of driving them out, and introducing Benedictine monks in their room. With this view he procured the promotion of his intimate friend, Oswald, to the See of Worcester, and of Ethelwald to that of Winchester-two prelates who were themselves monks, and animated with the most ardent zeal for the advancement of their order. The trio of bishops, the great champions of the monks, and enemies of the married clergy, now proceeded by every possible method of. fraud or force, to drive the married clergy out of all the monasteries, or compel them to put away their wives and children. Rather than consent to the latter, by far the greatest number chose to become beggars and vagabonds, for which the monkish historian gave them the most opprobrious of names. To countenance these cruel and tyrannical proceedings, Dunstan and his associates held up the married clergy as monsters of wickedness for cohabiting with their wives, magnified celibacy as the. only state becoming the sanctity of the sacerdotal office, and propagated a thousand lies of miracles and visions to its honor. In 969 a commission was granted to expel the married canons out of all the cathedrals and larger monasteries. At this time King Edgar made a flaming speech, in which he thus addressed Dunstan: "I know, 0 holy father Dunstan! that you have not encouraged these criminal practices of the clergy. You have reasoned, entreated, threatened. From words it is now time to come to blows. All the power of the crown is at your command. Strike boldly; drive these irregular livers out of the Church of Christ, and introduce others who will live according to rule." "And yet this furious champion for chastity had, some time before the delivery of this harangue, ravished a nun, a young lady of noble birth and great beauty, at which his holy father confessor was so much offended, that he enjoined him, by way of penance, not to wear his crown for seven years; to build a nunnery, and to persecute the married clergy with, all his might, a strange way of making atonement for his own libertinism, by depriving others of their natural rights and liberties."

may be divided into two periods. The one begins with the edict of Siricius in 385, and ends at the popedom of Gregory. The other commences with the papacy of Gregory, and continues until the present time.

It will be noticed that celibacy produces contamination and pollution. The very effort to abstain from it produces a morbid feeling which absorbs the thought, and inflames the passions. Hence the difference in the appearance of priests of Rome and ministers of Christ. In the confessional, in the convent, and in the home, a priests is a conspirator against virtue, and the ally of all that is debasing. Hence priests should wed. In Milan, Italy, the battle was even more fierce than in England. Ambrose led in it. He was respected by all, and loved by the majority, of priests and people. The priests, as a rule, stood with him, and resisted to the death the decree commanding them to break up their homes, and permit their wives to be called harlots and their children bastards. Because of this fact, the clergy of that famed portion of the church held a proud place in the regard of mankind.

It would be well if the laity of the Roman-Catholic Church would turn their attention to that page of history. They would behold the benefits resulting from the marriage of the priesthood. The men of the Roman-Catholic Church owe it to themselves, to their position as the God-appointed head of the home, to see to it that the command. �Let no one come between husband and wife,� be obeyed, and that the priest who has crept into the home, and help possession of the secrets of th household, be shut out from the sanctuary of the affections.

Edgar, in his �Variations of Popery,� uncovers the dark and the dirty side of the celibacy of the clergy. He says, �The celibacy of the clergy has for a long series of time been established in the Romish communion. The bishop, the priest, and the deacon are, in the popish theology, forbid to marry. This connection is indeed allowed to the laity. The institution in the system of Catholicism is accounted a sacrament, and therefore the sign and means of grace and holiness. The Council of Trent, in its twenty-fourth session, declares this ceremony one of the sacraments, by which, according to its seventh session, all real righteousness is begun and augmented." But, wonderful to tell, the Council, as well as the Catechism, prescribes, in sheer inconsistency, a renunciation of an institution which conveys true sanctity, as a necessary qualification for the priesthood.

The advocates of Romanism, however, vary on the decision of the question whether this celibacy be a divine, or human, or even useful, injunction. One party in the popish community account the interdiction a divine appointment. These make the prohibition a matter of faith and moral obligation, which unlike a question of mere discipline, neither the Pope nor the universal Church can change or modify. Commanded by God, and sanctioned by his almighty fiat, no earthly power can repeal the enactment, which, according to this system, must remain forever without alteration. This opinion was patronized by Jerome, Siricius, Innocent, and others. A second party reckons the celibacy of the clergy a human institution. These in general esteem the prohibition a question not of faith, but of discipline, prescribed not by God, but by man, and capable of being altered, or even repeated, by human authority. Aquinas, Bellarmine, Bossuet, Du Pin, Milner, and others supported this view.

A third party account sacerdotal celibacy not only unecclesiastical, inhuman, but useless and hurtful. The opposition to the prohibition, even in the bosom of the Romish communion, has in every age been persevering and powerful. The privation has been discountenanced by many of the ablest patrons of Romanism, such as Erasmus, Polydorus, Alvarus, and Pius. The celibacy of the clergy, says Pius the Second, is supported by strong reasons, but opposed by stronger. The edicts of Siricius and Innocent, by which the privation was first enforced, were rejected by many of the clergy. Gregory's tyranny on this topic met with decided hostility. Many chose to renounce the priesthood rather than submit to pontifical despotism, violate their conjugal engagements, or relinquish the object of their affections.

The German emperor and clergy supplicated Pius IV. for a repeal of the enactments against sacerdotal matrimony, and supported their petition with the most irrefragable arguments, such as the novelty of privation, and its dreadful consequences on morality.

Augustine, the Bavarian ambassador at Trent, petitioned against clerical celibacy, which he declared was not of divine right as commanded by God. His speech on the occasion met, even in the Council of Trent, with attention and. even applause. The French king and clergy at Paissy issued a similar petition to the Pope in 1561, saying, "Many of the popish errors, indeed, may, in theory, be absurd as clerical celibacy. But none in practice has been attended with such odious and appalling effects in the demoralization of man." The rankest and most disgusting debauchery, originating in the unnatural interdiction, has, in the Romish communion, disgraced sacerdotal dignity, and stained the annals of civil and ecclesiastical history.

"The celibacy of the clergy, in all its forms, is a variation from the Jewish theocracy delivered in the Old Testament. The Jews countenanced neither celibacy nor maidenhood, and the Jewish nation contained neither unmatrimonial priests nor cloistered nuns. The patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were married, and had a numerous offspring. Prior to Moses, the first-born of the Hebrews possessed both civil and ecclesiastical authority, and was prince and priest, but was not debarred connubial enjoyments Moses, the celebrated legislator of Israel., was married, and had a family. The holy prophets of Leviticus, such as Noah, Joseph, Samuel, David, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, formed this connection, and became the parents of sons and daughters. The Levitical priesthood were allowed the same liberty. Matrimony among the Israelitish clergy could hardly be called a permission, but amounted in one sense to a command. The priesthood among the descendants of Abraham was hereditary. The sons of the Aaronical priests succeeded, in consequence of their birthright, to the administration of the sacerdotal functions." This implied marriage and children.

The Christian dispensation affords express precept and example for the marriage of the clergy. Paul, addressing Timothy and Titus, represents the bishop as "the husband of one wife." The same is said of the deacon. Matrimony, therefore, according to the book of God, does not disqualify for the episcopacy or the deaconship. The inspired penman also characterizes "forbidding to marry" as the doctrine of devils. The interdiction of the conjugal union, according to apostolical authority, emanated not from God, but from Satan. The prohibition, and its effects upon the Romish clergy, are worthy of their author. All who are acquainted with manuals of sacerdotal celibacy reflect with disgust on an institution which in its progress has been marked with scenes of filthiness that have disgraced ecclesiastical history, the popish priesthood, and our common species. "Take away honorable wedlock," says Bernard, "and you will fill the Church with fornication, incest, sodomy, and all pollution." Erasmus, who was well acquainted with its effects, compared it to a pestilence. These authors have drawn the evil with the pencil of truth, and emblazoned the canvas with a picture taken from life. The apostles have left examples as well as precepts in favor of matrimony. All the apostles, says Ambrosius, except Paul and John, were married. The Saviour healed the mother Peter's wife, the pretended viceregent of heaven. Tradition favors the marriage of the clergy. The interdiction of sacerdotal matrimony is unknown to the oldest monuments of the Church, the mouldering fragments of Christian antiquity, and the primeval records of ecclesiastical history. No vestige of the prohibition is to be found in the long lapse of three hundred years after the era of redemption. Clemens, the catechist of Alexandria, says, "God allows every man, whether priest, deacon, or layman, to be the husband of one wife, and to use matrimony without reprehension. What can the enemy of matrimony say against procreation when it is permitted to a bishop, who ruleth well his own house, and who governs the church?"

Origen abstained from matrimony, and used a remedy in his own person, contrary to all law human and divine.

"The fifth apostolical canon pronounces excommunication, and, in ease of contumacy, deposition, against the bishop, priest, or deacon, who, under pretext of religion, puts away his wife."

Because of the march of superstition, celibacy obtained in the West, though always rejected in Eastern Christendom. Clerical celibacy is the child not of religion or Christianity, but of superstition and policy. Its votaries in every age have, by an affected singularity and ascetic contempt of pleasure, continued to attract the eye of superstition, deceive themselves, or amuse a silly world. Austerity of life, and abstinence from lawful as well as unlawful gratifications, the heathen accounted the summit of perfection. The Romans, though their Pontifex Maximus was a married man, had their vestal virgins who possessed extraordinary influence and immunity. The admiration of virginity began at an early period in Christianity. The reason of this 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 fading 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 springtide 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 out. rage 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, say that continency may always be obtained by prayer. Others, 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 difficulty of continence, if reports may be credited, was not peculiar to Chrysostom's day. Succeeding saints felt the arduousness of the mighty attempt.

The seraphic Francis, the father of the Franciscans, who lived in the thirteenth century, 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, on these occasions, adopted an effectual way of cooling this 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 belabored his importunate back with a disciplinarian whip; and then, leaving his cell, he buried his body, naked as he 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." This was when resistance was the rule. Now there is indulgence and prostitution.

"Godric, an English hermit, was troubled with the same complaint, and had recourse to the same remedy. He was a native of Norfolk, 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, endeavored 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 rigor 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 haircloth, he spent his days in tears and fasting. The hermit, with these applications in keeping the body under, used a sufficiently cooling regimen. During the wintry frost and snow, he immersed himself in the stream, of 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 Godrich terrified Beelzebub with shouts, so that affrighted, he dropped his haircloth garment and fled.''

Ulric's history is of a similar kind. He was born near Bristol, and fought the enemies of the human race for twenty years. He was visited, notwithstanding, with the demon of licentiousness. He fought the demon by the cold bath, and fasted till his 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 place, which constituted his headquarters, to sing the Psalms of David.

" Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor, required angelic aid to counteract the natural disposition of the mind, or rather of 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 firebrand. '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 concupiscence." 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 necessity, had recourse to a pointed remedy. This saint, like Aquinas, was born of a noble family. He was educated at Rome, and devoted himself wholly to religion or rather to superstition. He lived three years in a deep cave, and in his retreat wrought many miracles. 'He knocked the Devil out of one monk with a blow of his flat, and out of another with the lash of his whip.' But Satan, actuated by malice, and envious of human happiness, appeared to Benedict in the form of a black bird, 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, discovered a remedy. Having undressed himself, 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."

"An Irish priest actuated by a carnal propensity had recourse to a different remedy. The holy man lived near St. 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 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 bed-chamber; 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. Adhelm, bishop of Sherburn, had two ways of subduing the insurrections of the flesh. One consisted in remaining, during the winter, in a river which ran past his monastery. He continued for nights immersed in this stream, regardless of the icy cold. The frosty bath stopped the ebullition of his rebellious blood. 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. Some have represented marriage an a means of purity, and some of pollution. Clemens, Augustine, Chrysostom, Calmet, and others speak of matrimony as an institution of holiness, sanctity, honor, and utility. The Council of Gangra anathematized all who should reproach wedlock, and this sentence has been incorporated into the canon law. Others have represented the popish sacrament, especially in the clergy, as an appointment of pollution and degradation.

Origen reckoned conjugal intercourse inconsistent with the presence of the Holy Spirit, Jerome, it possible, surpassed Origen in bitterness. Marriage, according to this casuist, effeminates the manly mind. "A man, says the monk, cannot pray unless he refrain from conjugal enjoyments."

"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 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 reciprocations of friendship or affection. Celibacy and virginity which were unassociated with their carnal gratifications, and which affected a superiority to their allurements, became, with persons of this disposition, the objects of admiration" (p. 540).

"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." "These saints must have had a practical acquaintance with the subject, to which they have done so much justice in description. Speculation, without practice, would never have made them such adepts. Their sanctified contamination is so perfect in its kind, that it could not be the offspring of mere theory without action." This charge against their saintships may be substantiated by many quotations from their works, which, however, for the sake of decency is left in the obscurity of the original Greek and Latin, where it may stay. "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, or an Ovid. 23' 2

"Dens in modern times has outran Basil and all the saints of antiquity on the stadium of nastiness. His Theology, in which contamination lives and breathes, is a treasury of filthiness which can never be surpassed. He has shown an unrivaled genius for impurity; and future discovery can, in this department of learning, never eclipse his glory, nor deprive this precious divine of his well-earned fame and merited immortality. The philosophy of Newton has been improved. His astronomy, notwithstanding its grandeur, has received many accessions from other discoverers. But the sublimated obscenity a Dens, finished in its kind, admits of no advancement or progression. This doctor does not bear his blushing honors alone. The popish prelacy of America, by adopting his refined speculations to promote the education of the priesthood, share in his triumphs; and the inferior clergy, who are doomed to study his divinity, will no doubt manifest the value of his system by the superiority of their theological and holy attainments."'

"A third reason for the injunction of sacerdotal celibacy arose from pontifical policy. Cardinal Rodolf, arguing in a Roman consistory in favor of clerical celibacy, affirmed that the priesthood, if allowed to marry, would transfer their attachment from the Pope to their family and prince; and this would tend to the injury of the ecclesiastical community. The holy see, the cardinal alleged, would by this means be soon limited to the Roman city. The Transalpine party in the Council of Trent used the same argument. The introduction of priestly matrimony, this faction urged, would sever the clergy from their close dependence on the popedom, and turn their affections to their family, and consequently to their king and country. Marriage connects men with their sovereign and with the land of their nativity . Celibacy, on the contrary, transfers the . attention Of the clergy from his Majesty and the state, to his Holiness and the Church. The man who has a wife and children is bound by conjugal and paternal attachment to his country, and feels the warmest glow of parental love, mingled with the flame of patriotism. His interests and affections axe intwined with the honor and prosperity of his native land; and this, in consequence, he will prefer to the aggrandizement of the Romish hierarchy or the grandeur of the Roman pontiff. The dearest objects of his heart are embraced in the soil that gave them birth, the people among whom they live, and the government that affords them protection."

"Celibacy, on the contrary, precludes all these engagements, and directs the undivided affection of the priesthood to the Church and its ecclesiastical sovereign. The clergy become dependent on the Pope rather than on their ruler, and endeavor to promote the prosperity of the papacy rather than their country. Such are not linked with the state by an offspring whose happiness is involved in the prosperity of the nation. Gregory VII, accordingly, the great enemy of kings, was the distinguished patron of sacerdotal celibacy. He succeeded, to a great extent, in the suppression of priestly marriage. He summoned a council, and issued canons ' separating the married clergy from their partners, and forbidding the ordination of any who would not vow perpetual continence. He prohibited the laity from hearing mass when celebrated by a married priest. These enactments he enforced with his usual obstinacy and with his usual success. The laity seconded his efforts, and refused the communion and baptism from the married clergy."

Such, in brief, is the history of celibacy as recorded by different ecclesiastical historians. Celibacy is the Devil's own, and will hold its place until he is beaten and broken by the power of God. The effect on the clergy was terrible. The law ran counter to the tide of human nature and to the stream of human affection. The clergy, in many instances, resisted the mandate; and the exaction of obedience became a difficult task. A variety of plans were invented to evade or violate its severity. One variety took the name of

"This consisted in keeping female inmates in the dwellings of the priests. These were women devoted in profession, though not by vow, to virginity. Their ostensible duty was to superintend the domestic concerns of the house. The clergy enjoyed their society, while these maidens in return shared the clergy's bed and board. Forbidden to marry, they converted their homes into brothels. Cyprian, Jerome, and Chrysostom depicted the cohabitation of these holy domestics with a bold but faithful pencil. Cyprian mentions in language of strong condemnation their domestic familiarity by day, and their occupation of the same bed at night. The adultery and fornication of the clergy degenerated, in many instances, into incest and other abominations of the grossest kind. Some priests, according to the Council of Mentz in 888, had 'sons by their own sisters.' The Council of Nicea and some other of a later date, through fear of scandal, deprived the clergy of all female company, except a mother, a sister, or an aunt. It did no good. The means intended for prevention were the occasion of more accumulated scandal and more heinous criminality. The interdiction was the introduction to incestuous and unnatural prostitution."

Is there a reason to suppose that this state of things does not now exist? Recently, at a dinner given after the funeral of a priest had been attended, some one hundred priests were present. The caterer was a Baptist. He said that after the wine began to flow, their conversation became so filthy that the waiting-girls were shocked; and the brutes revelled and remission. Her spiritual father could spare her blushes, and his memory could supply any deficiency of recollection in the enumeration of her sins. A minute recapitulation of time, place, and other circumstantial trifles, would be unnecessary. The rehearsal of the delicious sin might, to both, be very amusing. The sacrament of confession, in this manner, would be recalling the transaction to mind, become very edifying, and afford a renewal of this enjoyment. The confessor, in the penance which he prescribed on these occasions, exemplified the virtues of compassion and charity. Christian commiseration and sympathy took the place of rigor and strictness. The holy father, indeed, could not be severe on so dear a friend; and the lady could not refuse to be kind again to such an indulgent father."

This language, so descriptive of what is horrid, and yet so insensible to the sin and wickedness of the transactions chronicled, proves the hopelessness of the attempt to reform Romanism. In the estimation of the writers it is little more than a caricature of Christianity, at variance with morality, destructive of piety, a sink of iniquity, a barrier to progress, and the foe of all that is elevating and ennobling in literature, in art, or religion.

"A third variety for the evasion of the canonical interdiction was clandestine or avowed matrimony. Some of the priests, though they could ill afford it, wished to keep a conscience. These, of course, would shudder at the commission of fornication or adultery, and had recourse, therefore, to the honorable institution of heaven for the prevention of such pollution. These, intrenched behind the authority of God, withstood the commandments of men. The number of these continued to increase, in opposition to the decretals of the popes, the canons of council, and the prepossessions of the people. 112

Such was the state of clerical matrimony at the accession of Hildebrand to the popedom in 1073. He determined to destroy clerical marriage, let come what might to morality, to virtue, to domestic happiness. The fight was very bitter while it lasted. Its influence is still felt.

At this point a fact might be stated which throws light upon the possibilities within reach of Romanists. A married priest is living in this country, identified with the Roman-Catholic Church. His name is Rev. John Wolanski, a Ruthenian or Greek of Little Russia; a Maronite, admitted to the Romish communion by the bull of Pope Benedict XIV. in 1741. So it comes to pass, that even the popes recognize a married clergy, and Greek rites, and the service in vulgar tongues, as quite consistent with the unity of the Roman communion.

"Why, then," asks Bishop A. Cleveland Coxe, in his article on "The Model Roman Catholics," "why, then, do the bolder spirits in America, who axe attached to the Papacy, but who also wish to be Americans, fail to see their opportunity? If Edward McGlynn, D.D., would leave his land theories to lay men, and devote his abilities and energies to exacting of the Roman court in behalf of Roman Catholics here, what the Pope concedes to them in Lithuania, he would perform a work worthy of a lifetime, and would be entirely consistent with his professions as a priest. He would emancipate hundreds of his brethren, and would entitle himself to the everlasting gratitude of those who, like him, adhere to the Papacy, but are equally determined to be true Americans. He would soon find, as did the Maronites, that the court of Rome, with all its 'great swelling words,' will exhibit only abject submission and servility when once boldly confronted by those who know their rights, and dare to maintain them. Among those rights, he ought to know, that, with the Anglo-Saxon fore fathers, it was a sacred principle that not even eccle-siasties should be summoned out of their own country to answer for alleged offences, even those strictly religious and not political. And all Americans ought to know, that, in order, to make the court of Rome omnipotent among its subjects here, the whole body, of Americans who profess the Trent faith, as well laity as ecclesiastics, are denied the position of a national Church, having rights under the canon law, and are held as mere missions, under the untempered despotism of a foreign principality, administered, in the case of the parish priests, with a degree of severity and cruelty which they keenly feel, but dare not resent."

"The spirit of Rome is seen in the fight waged with Wolanski. When he arrived in Philadelphia he called at the cathedral, then in charge of Vicar-general Walsh, with whom he had an interview. This interview was abruptly broken off when the Vicar learned that his priestly visitor was a married man, and had his wife with him. In Shenandoah he received much the same sort of reception from the priests. Alas, how little they care for the Scriptures! Cardinal Antonelli, if he did not have a wife, has a daughter now connected with a scandal. He was for years the bosom friend of Pio Nono. His better half was not a wife; and that entitled him to daily fellowship with the Pope, and to give new dogmas in his name to the universe." It is so here. Father Wolanski might have had a woman not his wife, and been welcomed to the cathedral palace. Obey God, and Rome shuts the door in your face. Disobey God, and the door stands wide open for promotion.

Cardinal Gibbons and other prelates are invited to consider how the Papal bull of 1741 conflicts with the practices of the Church at this hour. Where is the unity, then I Let Roman ecclesiastics demand the same proprieties of life to be conceded to them an Americans, which are guaranteed to these Russians, and Hungarians. If not, by what rule of consistency in the right refused? Rev. E. H. Walsh, once a Trappist monk in the monastery of Bardstown, Ky., says:

"I have been as thrilled and electrified by the revelations in 'Why Priests Should Wed' as any one in the land. Frequently, in the past, I have thought within myself in regard to these vile priestly doings, 'Are they going to be covered forever, because, for some reason or other, men will not dare expose the perfidy and criminality of ecclesiastics who are in high places, and are unscrupulous in the means employed to defeat the ends of those they hate? I am thankful to God that there is somebody who possesses the courage to tell the world what is being done in these sinks of iniquity, under the cloak of religion, and in the name of Christ. In the city of Boston are men who violate their solemn vows with impunity. I have been in pastors' houses where the curates protested against their having women in their private parlors at the most unseasonable hours; and I have known priests to spend Sundays card-playing and drinking, in the company of young women, who varied the monotony, by way of penance imposed by some holy father on his confreres, with a period of osculation, which was pawed around the circle. My own family, when I returned from Kentucky to this city, not knowing that I was disaffected, --flung in my face the profligate lives of priests who visited hotels in their control, in company with young girls whom they introduced as their sisters, and ran up large bills for turkey-suppers and champagne, remaining until the small hours of the morning.

And when they. reasoned with me afterwards in New York to induce me to come back again to the fold of Rome, I said, 'Do you want me to confess my sins to such men as those who spent nights in your hotel in the society of harlots? Would you have me even associate with such men as Father ��, who has had the unblushing boldness to have females in his house (under the very eye of his curates) whose characters were of the most questionable sort? Tell me a single priest of your acquaintance into whose charge I would commit my soul: those who have been drunk in your office and house, and of whom such unsavory things are reported?' Alongside of our monastery was an institution which one of our monks fiercely denounced on one occasion to a visiting prelate as a 'devilish place' that ought to be torn down; and when the immorality of the inmates became a settled fact, these saintly prostitutes who lived in the closest intimacy with the Trappist celibates (the Rt. Rev. father in God, the abbot, being the principal and most conspicuous actor in this vile drama) were turned adrift, which resulted in drawing from the coffers of the monks ten thousand dollars for hush-money. The superioress of this so-called nunnery was the wife of a man who was in the Kentucky Penitentiary, and the girls were largely off the public streets in Louisville. Who will ever tell the fiendish transactions of that place, by these monsters of iniquity, the many innocent lives that were taken to hide the sin of celibates, and cover the shame of women, who, under the hideous mask of piety and chastity, committed the foulest sins, and degraded utterly their womanhood? Many things came out in the conflict between abbot and bishop, that Romanists wished had never seen the light of day. The bishop was accused of wrong-doing in the same line that the abbot and some of the monks were exposed for, and crimination and recrimination between priest and monk seemed to be the order of the day; for when rogues and hypocrites fell out, the truth was uncovered, and facts that filled the Papists with horror were as numerous as stars of a wintry night."

"It is a fact, that some of the beat priests that ever officiated at Romish altars were known to have their own wives and children, though on the sly; and it is also a fact that the most profligate and vile among them are the loudest in their hypocritical professions of chastity and celibacy."

"The St. Louis Republican" of June 20, 1887, printed a letter from Bishop Hogan of the Catholic diocese of St. Joseph, Mo., which was brought out in court, and was never intended for publication; but it reveals a sad state of affairs.

The bishop appointed a German priest over an Irish congregation. This gave so great offence to some parties, that the letter in question was written in self-defense. His defense is, that the priests of his diocese were such a drunken lot that he was compelled to supply the parish as he did. He then gives a list by name of twenty-two priests , that were received into the diocese from 1869 to 1876, whom he was compelled to dismiss on account of immorality, especially drunkenness. Some of them are described as "constantly drunk"; one is "now going round from city to city a drunken wreck." go disgraceful was the state of affairs, that he was compelled at last to "turn over a new leaf." He says,

"The constant, shameful, public and sacrilegious drunkenness of the last three mentioned priests, who were by my side at the cathedral, determined me to wipe them and their kind out of my jurisdiction. Herbert, after repeated drunkenness, went into a spree for a week in my house; was in the house, broke out at night, got into a house of disreputable women in his drunkenness, and was thrown out into the street, picked up drunk, recognized, and taken into a house and made sober, and put into a carriage and taken to my house. That evening, Galvin and Kiley were told by me to prepare for the proper celebration of the feast of the patronage of St. Joseph for Easter Sunday. On Saturday night they staid up all night, drinking, carousing, and shouting. Kiley fell down, blackened and almost broke his face in falling. Of course the two sacrilegious priests said mass the next day; and Kiley went into the pulpit, and preached, with his blackened and bruised face, to the people of the cathedral. This was on the feast of the patron of the diocese, and of the universal church. It was time for me to begin a reformation."

The bishop began to purge his diocese and of course met with resistance from the drunken priests and their friends. But what a revelation of the secrets of a diocese this is!

Let every American insist upon a married priesthood, and for a pure Christian home rule. Let the husband become the head of the home, with no shadow of a priest coming between him and his household and the cloud that darkens the path of Romanists will be chased away, and millions will find their way back to the halcyon days of Ambrose, before the shadow of the iron sceptre of Hildebrand darkened the world. Then confidence shall take the place of suspicion, and the priesthood of the Romish Church shall join with the ministry of evangelical denominations in seeking an ennobling civilization for the land we love, and the God we serve.

Chapter 4