The origin and development of the moral ideas

A small class of Hebrews held the idea that marriage is impure. The Essenes, says Josephus, “reject pleasure as an evil, but esteem continence and the conquest over our passions to be virtue. They neglect wedlock.”77 This doctrine exercised no influence on Judaism, but probably much upon Christianity. St. Paul considered celibacy to be preferable to marriage. “He that giveth her (his virgin) in marriage doeth well; but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better.”78 “It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.”79 If the unmarried and widows cannot contain let them marry, “for it is better to marry than to burn.”80 These and other passages81 in the New Testament inspired a general enthusiasm for virginity. Commenting on the words of the Apostle, Tertullian points out that what is better is not necessarily good. It is better to lose one eye than two, but neither is good; so also, though it is better to marry than to burn, it is far better neither to marry nor to burn.82 Marriage “consists of that which is the essence of fornication”;83 whereas continence “is a means whereby a man will traffic in a mighty substance of sanctity.”84 The body which our Lord wore and in which He carried on the conflict of life in this world He put on from a holy virgin; and John the Baptist, Paul, and all the others “whose names are in the book of life”85 cherished and loved virginity.86 Virginity works miracles:

Mary, the sister of Moses, leading the female band, passed on foot over the straits of the sea, and by the same grace Thecla was reverenced even by lions, so that the unfed beasts, lying at the feet of their prey, underwent a holy fast, neither with wanton look nor sharp claw venturing to harm the virgin.87 Virginity is like a spring flower, always softly exhaling immortality from its white petals.88 The Lord himself opens the kingdoms of the heavens to eunuchs.89 If Adam had preserved his obedience to the Creator he would have lived for ever in a state of virgin purity, and some harmless mode of vegetation would have peopled paradise with a race of innocent and immortal beings.90 It is true that, though virginity is the shortest way to the camp of the faithful, the way of matrimony also arrives there, by a longer circuit.91 Tertullian himself opposed the Marcionites, who prohibited marriage among themselves and compelled those who were married to separate before they were received by baptism into the community.92 And in the earlier part of the fourth century the Council of Gangra expressly condemned anyone who maintained that marriage prevented a Christian from entering the kingdom of God.93 But, at the end of the same century, a council also excommunicated the monk Jovinian because he denied that virginity was more meritorious than marriage.94 The use of marriage was permitted to man only as a necessary expedient for the continuance of the human species, and as a restraint, however imperfect, on the natural licentiousness of desire.95 The procreation of children is the

These opinions led by degrees to the obligatory celibacy of the secular and regular clergy. The conviction that a second marriage of a priest, or the marriage of a priest with a widow, is unlawful, seems to have existed from the earliest period of the Church;97 and as early as the beginning of the fourth century a synod held in Elvira in Spain insisted on the absolute continence of the higher ecclesiastics.98 The celibacy of the clergy in general was prescribed by Gregory VII., who “looked with abhorrence on the contamination of the holy sacerdotal character, even in its lowest degree, by any sexual connection.” But in many countries this prescription was so strenuously resisted, that it could not be carried through till late in the thirteenth century.99

The practice of religious celibacy may be traced to several sources. In many cases the priestess is obviously regarded as married to the god whom she is serving, and is therefore forbidden to marry anybody else. In ancient Peru the Sun was the husband of the virgins dedicated to him.100 They were obliged to be of the same blood as their consort, that is to say, daughters of the Incas. “For though they imagined that the Sun had children, they considered that they ought not to be bastards, with mixed divine and human blood. So the virgins were of necessity legitimate and of the blood royal, which was the same as being of the family of the Sun.”101 And the crime of violating the virgins dedicated to the Sun was the same and punished in the same severe manner as the crime of violating the women of the Inca.102 Concerning the priestesses of the Tshi-speaking peoples of the Gold Coast, Major Ellis remarks that the reason for their celibacy appears to be that “a priestess belongs to the god she serves, and therefore cannot become the property of a man, as would be the case if she married one.”103 So also the Ew̔e-speaking peoples of the Slave Coast regard the women dedicated to a god as his wives.104 In the great temple of Jupiter Belus, we are told, a single woman used to sleep, whom the god had chosen for himself out of all the women of the land; and it was believed that he came down in person to sleep with her. “This,” Herodotus says, “is like the story told by the Egyptians of what takes place in their city of Thebes, where a woman always passes the night in the temple of the