sometimes they were contented with requiring that no public scandal* should be given: and Henry I., taking upon himself what may be called the Popely privilege of selling indulgences, allowed his clergy to retain their wives, upon payment of an annual tax,† in defiance of the ecclesiastical laws. Need I remind you what the consequences were when the steady and unrelenting policy of the Papal Court effected its object, and the clergy, not being allowed to contract the sacred and indissoluble tie of marriage, learnt to disregard the moral obligation which, under their circumstances, while it was observed, gave something like the sanction of conscience to concubinage? That sanction was effectually broken down by enactments annulling all settlements upon the women with whom they were thus connected, or their children, and declaring that all bequests made to such persons should be forfeited to the

* Clerici beneficiati, aut in sacris ordinibus constituti, in hospitiis suis publicè tenere Concubinas non audeant, nec etiam alibi cum scandalo accessum publicum habeant ad eas.-Lyndwood, 1. iii. tit. ii. p. 126.

There is a long gloss upon this canon to explain away the sense which the words obviously bear, and in which they would certainly be taken.

+ Lyttleton's Henry II. i. 153. Ed. 1769.

Lyndwood, l. iii. tit. xii. pp. 165, 166.

Church. The women themselves were to forfeit their freedom and become slaves* to the Bishop of the diocese; and a canon was passed in a Synod at Pavia, by which the children of the clergy, whatever their mothers might have been, were declared † slaves of the Church, and any judge who should pass sentence in favour of their liberty was anathematized. Then, indeed, when it was rendered impossible for the priest to discharge his duty towards the woman who had been the faithful partner of his life, and towards their children; and when, in consequence, women who had any worth were deterred, by the prospect of want and infamy, or of slavery for themselves and their offspring, from entering into such connections, the sure effect of these iniquitous and anti-christian laws was manifested in the reckless profligacy of the priesthood. For the heart of man never lies idle. If the domestic charities are not cultivated there, vices will spring up, like thorns and thistles in a neglected field. The state of clerical morals, as you, Sir, cannot but know, became to the last degree infamous from the time when Dr. Milner has the hardihood to

* Henry, vol. iii. 203.-Dublin Edition.

† Bernino, t. iii. p. 9.-Ditmarus is the authority to which he refers. There is a law to the same effect in the Partidas, Part iv. tit. xxi. ley 3.

assert that the incontinence of the clergy was extirpated! It had not been amended when the Council of Constance was held, and was not amended till the Reformation. At that crisis fear and danger and policy, and the zeal which is always exerted by party-spirit, united to effect what the Council of Trent, like those of Pisa and Constance and Basil, would otherwise only have talked of effecting. A check was given to that open and audacious profligacy against which Hus did not lift up a louder voice than the most eminent of those cardinals and prelates who concurred in the guilt of his martyrdom. But the root of the evil was left, because the influential men, who perceived where it lay, dared not attempt the only effectual remedy.

Gregory the Great is said to have been the first Pope who imposed this law upon the clergy, and when he perceived its injurious effects, he revoked the prohibition. His successors renewed and enforced it, because the consolidation of their own power was with

* Lenfant, C. of Constance, ii. 359.-A letter from Ulric Bishop of Augsburg to Pope Nicholas I. is Lenfant's authority, and he refers for it to the Casauboniana, 302. A doubtful authority ascribes the first injunction of celibacy to Pope Siricius in the latter part of the fourth century.-Venema, Hist. Eccles. Christ. t. iv. § 177. p. 190.

them paramount to all other considerations. You remember, Sir, the saying of Æneas Sylvius, that if there had formerly been good reasons for prohibiting the marriage of the clergy, there were now stronger ones for allowing it. It is a passage which Onuphrius suppressed in his edition of Platina's Lives of the Popes,* when that work was mutilated, as so many others have been, to make it suit the policy of the Romish Church. This was one of the opinions which that Pius Æneas changed upon his elevation to the Papacy. He then saw how expedient it was for the Court of Rome to favour the Monastic Orders, as its surest supporters, and therefore may have thought it dangerous to offend them upon a point which would certainly have armed them against him. But though he thus learnt to consider the prohibition as politic, his clear perception of its effects upon the character of the clergy could not have been changed. Their character was such that Cardinal Zabarella, who bore so conspicuous a part in the Council of Florence,† said it would be better to repeal the prohibition than to tolerate its consequences. What those consequences have been in the most catholic

* Lenfant, C. de Pise, i, 24.

+ Lenfant, C. of Constance, ii. 327, 359.

country in Europe, a country where no open scandal was tolerated, and where the Holy Office was ready, in aid of ecclesiastical discipline, to take cognizance of the morals of the clergy, we know from that Practical and Internal Evidence against the Romish system which Mr. Blanco White has laid before the world. Better service has seldom been rendered to the Protestant cause than by that most valuable and seasonable work.

These consequences were not unforeseen, and therefore the introduction of the injurious restriction was so long withstood. When, at the Council of Nice, it was proposed that the married clergy should no longer be allowed to cohabit with their wives, the Egyptian Bishop Paphnutius protested against imposing an obligation which it was certain that all could not observe, and which they could not endeavour to enforce without great injury to religion. Even the persons who made this unwise proposal yielded to the earnest and unanswerable reasoning of a prelate not more eminent for his sufferings in time of persecution, than for the unimpeached purity of his life; and the whole council* unanimously determined that the

* Bingham, i. 5. § 7. Socrates Scholasticus. Hanmer's Translation, p. 232.