XXXII. ART. of divine performances, that married persons should officiate in them; since by the law of Moses, Priests not only might marry, but the Priesthood was tied to descend as an inheritance in a certain family. And even the High Priest, who was to perform the great function of the annual atonement that was made for the sins of the whole Jewish nation, was to marry, and he derived to his descendants that sacred office. If there was so much as a remote unsuitableness between a married state and sacerdotal performances, we cannot imagine that God would by a law tie the Priesthood to a family, which by consequence laid an obligation on the Priests to marry. When Christ chose his twelve Apostles, some of them were married men; we are sure, at least, that St. Peter was; so that he made no distinction, and gave no preference to the unmarried: our Saviour did no where charge them to forsake their wives; nor did he at all represent celibate as necessary to the kingdom of Heaven, or the dispensation of the Gospel. He speaks indeed of some that brought Matth. xix. themselves to the state of eunuchs for the sake of the Gos10, 11, 12. pel; but in that he left all men at full liberty, by saying, Let him receive it that is able to receive it; so that in this every man must judge of himself by what he finds himself to be. That is equally recommended to all ranks of Heb. xiii.4. men, as they can bear it. St. Paul does affirm, that Marriage is honourable in all: and to avoid uncleanness, he 1 Cor. vii. says, It is better to marry than to burn; and so gives it as a rule, that every man should have his own wife. Among all the rules or qualifications of Bishops or Priests, that are given in the New Testament, particularly in the Epistles 1 Tim. iii. to Timothy and Titus, there is not a word of the celibate 2, 4, 5, 12. of the Clergy, but plain intimations to the contrary, that they were, and might be married. That of the husband of one wife is repeated in different places: mention is also made of the wives and children of the Clergy, rules being given concerning them: and not a word is so much as insinuated, importing that this was only tolerated in the beginnings of Christianity, but that it was afterwards to 1 Tim. iv. cease. On the contrary, the forbidding to marry is given as a character of the apostasy of the later times. We find Aquila, when he went about preaching the Gospel, was not only married to Priscilla, but that he carried her about with him: not to insist on that privilege that St. 1 Cor. ix. Paul thought he might have claimed, of carrying about with him a sister and a wife, as well as the other Apostles. And thus the first point seems to be fully cleared, that by no law of God the Clergy are debarred from marriage. 9. 3. 5. There is not one word in the whole Scriptures that does so ART. much as hint at it; whereas there is a great deal to the XXXII. contrary. Marriage being then one of the rights of human nature, to which so many reasons of different sorts may carry both a wise and a good man, and there being no positive precept in the Gospel that forbids it to the Clergy; the next question is, Whether it is in the power of the Church to make a perpetual law, restraining the Clergy from marriage? It is certain that no age of the Church can make a law to bind succeeding ages; for whatsoever power the Church has, she is always in possession of it; and every age has as much power as any of the former ages had. Therefore if any one age should by a law enjoin celibate to the Clergy, any succeeding age may repeal and alter that law. For ever since the inspiration that conducted the Apostles has ceased, every age of the Church may make or change laws in all matters that are within their authority. So it seems very clear, that the Church can make no perpetual law upon this subject. In the next place it may be justly doubted, whether the 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 ART engage the whole Priesthood into its interests against the XXXII. 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. 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. If 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 those monstrous ones are on the other. It is more reasonable 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 liber- ART. tinism that was unbecoming the purity required of Chris- XXXII. tians. 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 in 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 best ages lived still with their wives. So did the fathers both 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. Some proposed in the Council of Nice, that the Clergy Socr. Hist. should depart from their wives; but Paphnutius, though Eccl. lib. i. himself unmarried, opposed this, as the laying an unreasonably heavy yoke upon them. Heliodorus, a Bishop, c. 12. ART. the author of the first of those love-fables that are now XXXII. known by the name of Romances, being upon that account was 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 had been twice married; but even for this there was a distinction: if a man had been once married before his baptism, and 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 Episcope and Presbytera. 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 out of their benefices, and Monks came in their places. Nor 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 him |