discussion; at the same time, the passages to be cited will afford the means of exhibiting in its true colours, the general condition of the ancient church, moral and religious, and will therefore serve to dissipate the illusions that are apt to surround the objects of a remote antiquity. My propositions are

I. That the lapse of eight hundred or a thousand years exhibits very little, if any, progression, in the quality or extravagance of those notions which gave support to the practices of religious celibacy; and that the attendant abuses of this system were nearly as flagrant at the earlier, as at the later date.

II. That, at the very earliest time when we find these notions and practices to have been generally prevalent, and accredited, they were no novelties; but had come down from a still earlier era.

III. That, as these notions and practices are of immemorial antiquity, so did they affect the church universal-eastern, western, and african and that thus they come fully within the terms of the rule-quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus.

IV. That these opinions and practices, in their most extreme form, including the wild fanaticism of the Egyptian Solitaries, and the celibacy of the clergy, received an ample and explicit sanction, from ALL the great writers and doctors of the church, during the most prosperous and enlightened age of any, preceding the reformation; and that, on this head, popery has no peculiar culpability.

V. That the notions and practices connected with the doctrine of the superlative merit of religious celibacy, were at once the causes and the effects of errors in theology, of perverted moral sentiments, of superstitious usages, of hierarchical usurpations; and that they furnish us with a criterion for estimating the GENERAL VALUE OF ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY; and, in a word, afford reason enough for regarding, if not with jealousy, at least with extreme caution, any attempt to induce the modern church to imitate the ancient church.

66

THE CELIBATE-EARLIER AND LATER.

My first thesis then is to this effect

That no essential change, or material enhancement is to be traced, as having taken place during the course of many centuries, dating from what is called the pristine age of the church, in regard to the notions entertained concerning the merit and angelic virtues of celibacy; and that some of the extreme evils usually considered as inseparable from these notions, attached to them from the earliest times; or in other words, that the vices and absurdities of romanism, on this ground, are only the vices and absurdities of

ANCIENT CHRISTIANITY.

For the purpose of establishing the position here assumed, and which, if actually made good, may go far toward clearing a path over the ground of the present controversy, I shall study brevity and condensation, as far as may consist with a satisfactory and, if it were possible, a final treatment of this initial portion of the argument. It will manifestly be requisite to adduce passages, first, from some two or three of the authenticated writers of the later and mature times of romanism, by the side of which must be placed analogous, or parallel quotations from the leading antenicene fathers; and on a comparison of the two, it will be for calm and candid minds to determine whether my first thesis affirms more than ought to have been asserted.

It was not, as I have already said, the authorities of the romish church-popes, cardinals, councils, that pushed forward the system of spiritual prostitution, superstition and tyranny; but much

rather a deeply-working spirit acting from within the church; and this spirit is one and the saine, whether uttering itself from the fervid lips of St. Dominic de Guzman, or St. Bernard, or the not less fervid lips of a father of the second and third century. This spirit proved itself in fact to be far more potent than the authority which the popes themselves exerted, even about the walls of the Vatican. A curious instance presents itself, which may serve as a commencement of this series of testimonies. So late as the twelfth century many of the monastic institutions continued to be of an open kind; that is to say, some of the religious establishments were merely lodging houses, for persons professing more assiduity in the offices of piety than their neighbours; and where the freest access was allowed to the parents and friends of the (mis-called) recluses. In other cases, even residence in the nunnery was dispensed with, so that those who had enrolled themselves as members of a certain society, and as intending to adhere to the rules of the order, continued to live with their friends; and to mix pretty freely in general society. This laxity of practice, open as it must have been to abuses, and tending to weaken much the hold which the church might have had over the entire system, had long engaged the zealous endeavours of Innocent III. to redress it; but he, despot as he was, had laboured with little success, even in Rome itself, to effect an absolute incarceration of all who had bound themselves by the monastic rules, and to seclude them effectively, not from the world merely, but from their nearest relatives. The letters of this pope betray, at once, his extreme anxiety to bring about this necessary reform, and the vexation with which he witnessed the small success of his endeaBut wherein a pope, and such a pope as Innocent III. fails, and confesses himself overmatched, a Dominic† easily triumphs, after only a second effort, and without the necessity of exhibiting more than a single and a customary miracle. To the vagrant and giddy nuns of Rome, this saint had offered his own

vours.

*

• The decretals of Gregory IX. (p. 962, and elsewhere) show that these practices were then becoming less frequent; in other words, that the abuses deplored by the nicene writers, were at length remedied by the church of Rome.

+ Lives of the Saints, St. Dominic.

newly erected monastery, in that city; with the hope of tempting them to abandon the laxity of their practices; and at length he obtained their reluctant consent to make this sumptuous palace of poverty their abode, and their prison. Their alarmed relatives succeeded, however, in bringing them to renounce so inconsiderate a promise; nor was it until after a new and more strenuous exertion of his spiritual influence, that the saint finally triumphed over the impulses, as well of their better, as of their worse natures. On Ash-Wednesday, 1218, the abbess, and some of her nuns the elder sisters probably (of the monastery of St. Mary beyond the Tiber) went to take possession of their new abode; where they found already, St. Dominic in conference with three cardinals -commissioners, in this instance, with himself. But hardly had the first compliments passed between these reverend persons, when it was suddenly announced by a messenger, tearing his hair to admiration, that a young nobleman, named Napoleon,* and who was the nephew of one of the said cardinals, had just been thrown from his horse, and-killed on the spot! Forthwith the conference is broken off, and the lifeless and lacerated body is, by command of the thaumaturgus of the age,' brought within doors: mass is said the saint, in celebrating the divine mysteries, shed a flood of tears, and while elevating the body of Christ in his pure hands, he was himself, in an ecstasy, lifted up a whole cubit from the ground, in the sight, and to the amazement, of all who were present. After a while, and as might have been expected, while St. Dominic himself continued suspended in the air, he cried, with a loud voice, 'Napoleon, I say to thee, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, arise.' That instant, in the sight of the whole multitude, the young man arose, sound and whole! What then could the refractory or reluctant nuns of St. Mary do, but, at the bidding of this raiser of the dead, rush into the net prepared for them; and pine away the residue of their years, within the gloomy walls of the monastery of St. Sixtus?

But now, you will say, all this is mere popery; and what have we to do with its superstitions, or with the impious frauds which,

This morning-star of the race of Napoleon, could, no doubt, sham dead as handsomely, and naturally, as his illustrious namesake, of our times, acted the part of a good mussulman, or a good catholic, when needful.

from age to age, have been perpetrated to give them credit? What we have to do with these things is this to retrace the course of time, a thousand years, or nearly as much, and there and then to discover, in the bosom of the pristine and martyr church, not perhaps the very same forms, usages, frauds, follies; but yet those substantial elements of religious opinion, and of moral sentiment, which gave support to all these abominations, and apart from which they would never have had existence. This then is the gist of our present argument-that there is absolutely nothing in the ripe popery of the times of St. Dominic (certain elaborate modes of proceeding excepted) which is not to be found in the christianity of the times of Cyprian or of Tertullian; and even if we do not find the same villainous frauds, in the earlier age, we find not less laxity of manners.

The last named father I reserve to be placed side by side with a kindred spirit of the middle ages; and at present turn to the mild, undoubtedly pious, and judicious, as well as eloquent, martyr archbishop of Carthage. Let us then, at a leap of one thousand years, pass the dark abyss of popery, and imagine ourselves fairly landed upon the terra firma of pristine purity-the realm of the still bleeding and voluntary church, whence may be descried, like a waning twilight, the brightness of the apostolic age. The pas sages I am to offer are not merely highly significant, in themselves, and indispensable as links in our argument, but they tend directly to lay open what was the real condition, spiritual and ecclesiastical, of the early church. In abridging, so far as may be requisite, my quotations, and in taking single expressions from paragraphs, I stand pledged (and am open to an easy rebuke if detected in any wilful perversions) to omit nothing which, if adduced, might serve to contravene the inference I have in view; and if, on the other hand, I am compelled to retrench not a little which would most pointedly support that inference, I do so in deference to the propriety which modern refinement prescribes. Whoever will look into the authors cited will, I am sure, admit that, to have availed myself of the materials before me in a less scrupulous manner, would not a little have strengthened the position I maintain.

You will tell me that you are already familiar with the passages