belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord; he that is married careth for the things that are of the world," &c. In this text of St. Paul there is a hiatus, as usual: he leaves it for those to devote themselves wholly to God who may choose to do so, recommending to all not to bestow their anxieties on this world. The passage commences thus: "But I would have you without carefulness; he that is unmarried," &c. But, surely, the Pope might have found other passages of this very chapter not inapplicable to his subject? We will point them out:

V.

1 Cor. vii. v. 2.-" To avoid fornication let every man have his own wife, and every woman have her own husband." At v. 10, 11, we are informed that St. Paul commands by the Spirit of God when he forbids those who are married to put each other away; but what says he in reference to the subject of the Pope's extract? Why this :—

Verse 6.—" But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment."

12.—“ But to the rest speak I, not the Lord," &c. 26.—" I suppose, therefore, that this is good," &c. 28.-" But, and if thou marry thou hast not sinned,” &c.

Thus far as to the negative proofs of the Pope's solitary quotation from the Scriptures: those of the most positive authority, applicable to this part of our subject, are contained in almost every Gospel and Epistle of the New Testament, as well as in the books of the Old. A few examples, taken from the former will, we should suppose, be sufficient. St. Paul says,

Heb. xiii. v. 4.-"Marriage is honourable in ALL," &c.— (We have already shown where he says, forbidding to marry is a doctrine of devils.)

1 Pet. ch. iii.-[This whole chapter is addressed to husbands and wives on the duties of the married state.]

We will now show that marriage is not only "honourable

in ALL," but that it is enjoined to the Clergy in particular, in the most expressive manner. St. Paul says,

1 Tim. iii. v. 2.-"A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober," &c.

Ver. 3.—“ Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre," &c.

4.

One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity."

5.-" (For if a man know not how to rule his Own house, how shall he take care of the CHURCH of God?)"

6.-"Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil."-[This Apostle gives similar directions how ministers should be qualified, to Titus, ch. i.]" Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as the other Apostles, and as the brethren of our Lord and Cephas?"-1 Cor. ix. 5.

We know not how any person who could read, could, by possibility, misunderstand the above commands of the Apostle, unless a Popish miracle had been wrought upon him, and had deprived him of the use of his senses. We have shown wherein the Church of Rome has, in her "Profession of Faith," made considerable additions to Christianity; and surely denying (what she calls a sacrament of grace) to her Clergy is a great substraction from it, and which must leave her pastors by so much the more graceless than her laity. Christ himself makes marriage the type of heaven, calling himself the bridegroom, and the church his spouse.

Some readers may, perhaps, imagine that Popery, when her power was not quite so limited as at present, had other views than those of devotion in prohibiting the marriage of her Clergy: it certainly added both to her wealth and domination; her Canon Law* not permitting her regular bishops to dispose of their estates by will, the Pope thus became the

*Decret. Gregor. lib. 3. de Testam. cap. 7, 9.

holy treasurer of his Church :-as a matter of conscience, we have already given our scriptural proofs. St. John was the only "virgin Apostle," St. Paul himself having been married*, as the ancient Fathers say. But with the Scriptures before us, all other authorities are, at best, but secondary; and from these we learn, as above, that the Apostles were married—a practice followed by the clergy in the purest ages of Christianity. The Douay Catechism teaches that "a wilful transgression in matter of weight against any known commandment of the Church," or of some lawful superior, is a mortal sin, which deprives the soul of her spiritual life;" among the deadly sins are pride, sloth, &c. Fornication is but a venial sin in the Church of Rome, and which, when her priests are publicly discovered to have committed-(no easy matter if they act with any degree of caution)—they are excused by their opus operatum—a slight penance, perhaps, or removed (to save scandal) to some other district; but let them enter into "holy matrimony," and they would be degraded and anathematized. Thus is the sin we have named tolerated, if not allowed†, by the Romish Church, and for which reason it is distinguished in the Protestant Liturgy as a deadly sin. But wherefore is it deemed a less sin than marriage? Because the first is only a breach of the commandment of GOD-the second evinces a disobedience to the command of the Pope!

The origin of this affectation of unnatural celibacy first took its rise from the enthusiasm of those of the Christians who, in their zeal for the religion they professed, forgot the pure doctrines of Christ, in neglecting the duties of their worldly state, to perform works of supererogation. Nothing, however, so preposterous as forcing a great body of young fellows into a state of celibacy—and empowering them to

See Ignatius, Clemens, Eusebius, Ambrose, &c., quoted by all ecclesiastical writers on this subject.

Gloss, ad Gratian, Dist. 82, c,5.

resist their own inclination to act otherwise in the midst of temptation was ever thought of until many ages afterwards, Our Saxon minister, Dunstane, who turned Monk, crowned Edmund, and was afterwards made a saint of-he, at the council of Calne (Wilts), about the year 997, publicly harangued the nobles, monks, and priests against the marriage of the clergy; but so ineffectually, that he (as he had done upon other occasions) found it necessary to work a miracle* to enforce his doctrine. The floor fell in with all his opponents, he having first taken care to stand upon a plank which he had not previously ordered to be loosened. But it was reserved to the notorious Hildebrand, the Monk of Clugny, after he became Pope, under the title of Gregory VII., to insist on this unscriptural tenet in the latter end of the eleventh century; but which decree was not attended to by the clergy of England, until about a century afterwards. This ambitious tyrant, (now a Saint!) who openly assumed a temporal power over all princes, had his own reasons for condemning marriage in his clergy rather than crimes forbidden by Christ. He was the director of MATHILDA, Countess of Tuscany, who, in consequence, separated from her husband; and, as a reward for his spiritual instruction, at her death bequeathed to him her immense possessionst. After the prohibition of marriage, the clergy became one living mass of impurity; giving a loose to their depravity with the most unblushing impudence. Æneas Sylvius afterwards Pope Pius II. (after the holy council of Constance, which burned John Huss, and Jerome, of Prague), shamelessly avowed the scandal of his Church, by stating that the sin of fornication " was an old fault; that he was no better than David or Solomon, and that he knew not one who was free from it. We are not about to write a treatise on the

* See Turner's Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons.

Cardinal Benno, who lived in this Popedom, was at enmity with Gregory, and therefore what he says of him is liable to distrust. (What he says of the seven preceding Pontiffs is not calculated to raise Popish infallibility very highly among civilized Papists.) See Mosheim, and the numerous Roman Catholic writers therein quoted upon this subject.

crimes of Popes; they are handed down to us by the Popish writers themselves. We have merely shown that men who, as Pope Pius says (p. 102), "by their office and functions ought to be wholly devoted" to a more worthy service, by affecting celibacy, never were so, and never can be. In our own days, however "distracting" a married life might be to a Roman Catholic Priest, we should think, with all deference, that it could scarcely exceed the tumult of public meetings, &c. &c., in which we find them constantly engaged? Although wives might pout, yet do not politicians declaim; and, whether laical or clerical, enjoin perseverance in attaining a political object? And though infants might cry, still we can scarcely think it would more distract the thoughts of pious priests, than the howling of incendiaries over the cabins of heretics they have destroyed? *

to

The reasons assigned in the two last paragraphs of this chapter we think very lame indeed. The innumerable ceremonies of the Romish Church are employed, it is said, 66 stir up devotion,"—and certainly a very bustling stir they make. Is crying to a block of wood or marble, thumping the breast, kissing the hem of a priest's robe, dressing and undressing of priests at the altar, sprinkling, crossing, genuflexions, &c. &c. &c., are all these, and a hundred other ceremonies necessary to "decency," "GOD's honour," or the "salvation of souls?" Rather say, the theatrical repre

* Although we have not said, nor intend to say, that every Romish priest is not a perfect Joseph, it must not be inferred that we could not prove to the contrarymaugre infallibility!-Gandolphy, however, who was a Popish priest, speaks thus of himself and brethren, in a holy composition of Sermons (Vol. iv. p. 112), in all humility: the Romish priest, he says, "Walks among men a miracle of grace-is the rock that pours forth water to the fainting-the manna that yields bread to the hungry?" The humble pastor thus proceeds :-" My brethren, to the reflecting mind this ministry must, surely, present something divinely sacred, and appears more worthy the nature of angels than of men? It exalts them above all for which human life has designed them-makes them the agents of God, the vicegerents of Jesus Christ, and the SAVIOURS of MEN! In this point of view it ranks them even ABOVE the ANGELIC SPIRITS, and clothes them with the divine character of the MESSIAH HIMSELF!!!". This holy composition, consisting of four volumes, was declared by the late Pope Pius VII., to be worthy of being "cased in cedar and gold." But Gandolphy's holiness at length fell off, since a few years ago he was publicly censured by his anathematizing Mother in Spanish Place Chapel.