Institutes of the Christian Religion (Vol. 2 of 2)

XXII. There remains the second part of the discipline of the Church, which particularly relates to the clergy. It is contained in the canons which the ancient bishops imposed on themselves and their order; such as these: That no ecclesiastic should employ his time in hunting, gambling, or feasting; that no one should engage in usury or commerce; that no one should be present at dissolute dances; and other similar injunctions. Penalties were likewise annexed, to confirm the authority of the canons, and to prevent their being violated with impunity. For this end, to every bishop was committed the government of his clergy, to rule them according to the canons, and to oblige them to do their duty. For this purpose were instituted annual visitations and synods, that if any one were negligent in his duty, he might be admonished, and that any one who committed a fault might be corrected according to his offence. The bishops also had their provincial councils, once every year, and anciently even twice a year, by which they were judged, if they had committed any breach of their duty. For if a bishop was too severe or violent against his clergy, there was a right of appeal to the provincial councils, even though there was only a single complainant. The severest punishment was the deposition of the offender from his office, and his exclusion for a time from the communion. And because this was a perpetual regulation, they never used to dissolve a provincial council without appointing a time and place for the next.

For, to summon a universal council, was the exclusive prerogative of the emperor, as all the ancient records testify. As long as this severity continued, the clergy required nothing more from the people than they exemplified in their own conduct. Indeed, they were far more severe to themselves than to the laity; and it is reasonable that the people should be ruled with a milder and less rigid discipline; and that the clergy should inflict heavier censures, and exercise far less indulgence to themselves than to other persons. How all this has become obsolete, it is unnecessary to relate, when nothing can be imagined more licentious and dissolute than this order of men in the present day; and their profligacy has gone to such a length, that the whole world is exclaiming against them. That all antiquity may not appear to have been entirely forgotten by them, I confess, they deceive the eyes of the simple with certain shadows, but these bear no more resemblance to the ancient usages, than the mimicry of an ape to the rational and considerate conduct of men. There is a remarkable passage in Xenophon, where he states how shamefully the Persians had degenerated from the virtues of their ancestors, and, from an austere course of life, had sunk into delicacy and effeminacy, but that, to conceal their shame, they sedulously observed the ancient forms.

For whereas, in the time of Cyrus, sobriety and temperance were carried so far, that it was unnecessary, and was even considered as a disgrace for any one to blow his nose, their posterity continued scrupulously to refrain from this act; but to absorb the mucus, and retain the fetid humours produced by their gluttony, even till they almost putrefied, was held quite allowable. So, according to the ancient rule, it was unlawful to bring cups to the table; but they had no objection to drink wine till they were obliged to be carried away drunk. It had been an established custom to eat only one meal a day; these good successors had not abolished this custom, but they had continued their banquets from noon to midnight. Because their ancient law enjoined men to finish their day’s journey fasting, it continued to be a permanent custom among them; but they were at liberty, and it was the general practice, for the sake of avoiding fatigue, to contract the journey to two hours. Whenever the Papists bring forward their degenerate rules, for the purpose of showing their resemblance to the holy fathers, this example will sufficiently expose their ridiculous imitation, of which no painter could draw a more striking likeness.

XXIII. In one instance, they are too rigorous and inflexible, that is, in not permitting priests to marry. With what impunity fornication rages among them, it is unnecessary to remark; imboldened by their polluted celibacy, they have become hardened to every crime. Yet this prohibition clearly shows how pestilent are all their traditions; since it has not only deprived the Church of upright and able pastors, but has formed a horrible gulf of enormities, and precipitated many souls into the abyss of despair. The interdiction of marriage to priests was certainly an act of impious tyranny, not only contrary to the word of God, but at variance with every principle of justice. In the first place, it was on no account lawful for men to prohibit that which the Lord had left free. Secondly, that God had expressly provided in his word that this liberty should not be infringed, is too clear to require much proof. I say nothing of the direction, repeatedly given by Paul, that a bishop should be “the husband of one wife;”[1068] but what could be expressed with greater force, than where he announces a revelation from the Holy Spirit, “that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, forbidding to marry,” and represents these not only as impostors, but as disseminating “doctrines of devils.”[1069] This, therefore, was a prophecy, a sacred oracle of the Holy Spirit, by which he intended from the beginning to forearm the Church against dangers—that the prohibition of marriage is a doctrine of devils.

But our adversaries imagine themselves to have admirably evaded this charge, when they misapply it to Montanus, the Tatianists, Encratites, and other ancient heretics. It refers, say they, to those who have condemned marriage altogether; we by no means condemn it; we merely prohibit it to the clergy, from an opinion that it is not proper for them. As if, though this prophecy had once been accomplished in those ancient heretics, it might not also be applicable to them; or as if this puerile cavil, that they do not prohibit marriage, because they do not prohibit it to all, were deserving of the least attention. This is just as if a tyrant should contend that there can be no injustice in a law, the injustice of which only oppresses one part of a nation.

XXIV. They object, that there ought to be some mark to distinguish the clergy from the laity. As though the Lord did not foresee what are the true ornaments in which priests ought to excel. By this plea, they charge the apostle with disturbing the order and violating the decorum of the Church, who, in delineating the perfect model of a good bishop, among the other virtues which he required in him, dared to mention marriage. I know that they interpret this to mean, that no one is chosen a bishop who shall have had a second wife. And I grant that this interpretation is not new; but that it is erroneous, is evident from the context itself; because he immediately after prescribes what characters the wives of bishops and deacons ought to possess. Paul places marriage among the virtues of a bishop; these men teach that it is a vice not to be tolerated in the clergy; and not content with this general censure, they call it carnal pollution and impurity, which is the language of Syricius, one of the pontiffs, recited in their canons. Let every man reflect from what source these things can have proceeded. Christ has been pleased to put such honour upon marriage, as to make it an image of his sacred union with the Church. What could be said more, in commendation of the dignity of marriage? With what face can that be called impure and polluted, which exhibits a similitude of the spiritual grace of Christ?

XXV. Now, though their prohibition is so clearly repugnant to the word of God, yet they find something in the Scriptures to urge in its defence. The Levitical priests, whenever it came to their turn to minister at the altar, were required not to cohabit with their wives, that they might be pure and immaculate to perform the sacrifices; it would therefore be exceedingly unbecoming for our sacraments, which are far more excellent and of daily recurrence, to be administered by married men. As though the evangelical ministry and the Levitical priesthood were one and the same office. On the contrary, the Levitical priests were antitypes, representing Christ, who, as the Mediator between God and man, was to reconcile the Father to us by his perfect purity. Now, as it was impossible for sinners to exhibit in every respect a type of his sanctity, yet in order to display some faint shadows of it, they were commanded to purify themselves in a manner beyond what is common among men, whenever they approached the sanctuary; because on those occasions they properly represented Christ, in appearing at the tabernacle, which was a type of the heavenly tribunal, as mediators to reconcile the people to God. As the pastors of the Church now sustain no such office, the comparison is nothing to the purpose.

Wherefore the apostle, without any exception, confidently pronounces, that “marriage is honourable in all; but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.”[1070] And the apostles themselves have proved by their own example that marriage is not unbecoming the sanctity of any office, however excellent; for Paul testifies that they not only retained their wives, but took them about with them.[1071]

XXVI. It has also betrayed egregious impudence, to insist on this appearance of chastity as a necessary thing, to the great disgrace of the ancient Church, which abounded with such peculiar Divine knowledge, but was still more eminent for sanctity. For if they pay no regard to the apostles, whom they often have the hardihood to treat with contempt, what will they say of all the ancient fathers, who, it is certain, not only tolerated marriage in bishops, but likewise approved of it? It would follow that they must have practised a foul profanation of sacred things, since, according to the notion we are opposing, they did not celebrate the mysteries of the Lord with the requisite purity. The injunction of celibacy was agitated in the council of Nice; for there are never wanting little minds, absorbed in superstition, who endeavour to make themselves admired by the invention of some novelty. But what was the decision? The council coincided in the opinion of Paphnutius, who pronounced that “a man’s cohabitation with his own wife is chastity.” Therefore marriage continued to be held sacred among them, nor was it esteemed any disgrace to them, or considered as casting any blemish on the ministry.

XXVII. Afterwards followed times distinguished by a too superstitious admiration of celibacy. Hence those frequent and extravagant encomiums on virginity, with which scarcely any other virtue was in general deemed worthy to be compared. And though marriage was not condemned as impure, yet its dignity was so diminished, and its sanctity obscured, that he who did not refrain from it was not considered as aspiring to perfection with sufficient fortitude of mind. Hence those canons, which prohibited the contraction of marriage by those who had already entered on the office of priests; and succeeding ones, which prohibited the admission to that office of any but those who had never been married, or who had abjured all cohabitation with their wives. Because these things seemed to add respectability to the priesthood, they were received, I confess, even in early times, with great applause. But our adversaries object antiquity against us. I answer, In the first place, in the days of the apostles, and for several ages after, the bishops were at liberty to marry; and the apostles themselves, as well as other pastors of the highest reputation who succeeded them, made use of this liberty without any difficulty. The example of the primitive Church we ought to hold in higher estimation than to deem that unlawful or unbecoming which was then received and practised with approbation.

Secondly; even that age, which, from a superstitious attachment to virginity, began to be more unfavourable to marriage, did not impose the law of celibacy upon the priests as if it were absolutely necessary, but because they preferred celibacy to marriage. Lastly; this law did not require the compulsion of continence in those who were not able to keep it; for while the severest punishments were denounced on priests who were guilty of fornication, those who married were merely dismissed from their office.

XXVIII. Therefore, whenever the advocates of this modern tyranny attempt to defend their celibacy with the pretext of antiquity, we shall not fail to reply, that they ought to restore the ancient chastity in their priests, to remove all adulterers and fornicators, not to suffer those, whom they forbid the virtuous and chaste society of a wife, to abandon themselves with impunity to every kind of debauchery, to revive the obsolete discipline by which all indecencies may be repressed, to deliver the Church from this flagitious turpitude, by which it has been so long deformed. When they shall have granted this, it will still be necessary to admonish them not to impose that as necessary, which, being free in itself, depends on the convenience of the Church. Yet I have not made these observations from an opinion that we ought on any condition to admit those canons which impose the obligation of celibacy on the clergy, but to enable the more judicious to perceive the effrontery of our adversaries in alleging the authority of antiquity to bring disgrace on holy marriage in priests. With respect to the fathers, whose writings are extant, with the exception of Jerome, they have not so malignantly detracted from the virtue of marriage, when they have been expressing their own sentiments. We shall content ourselves with one testimony of Chrysostom, because he, who was a principal admirer of virginity, cannot be supposed to have been more lavish than others in commendation of marriage. He says, “The first degree of chastity is pure virginity; the second is faithful marriage.