Paragraph 32.1

Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, are not commanded by God’s Law either to vow the Estate of Single Life, or to abstain from Marriage: Therefore it is lawful for them, as well as for all Christian Men, to Marry at their own discretion, as they shall judg the same to serve better to Godliness.

The first Period of this Article, to the word (Therefore) was all that was published in King Edward’s time. They were content to lay down the Assertion, and left the Inference to be made as a Consequence that did naturally arise out of it. There was not any one Point that was more severely examined at the time of the Reformation than this: For as the irregular Practices and dissolute Lives of both Seculars and Regulars, had very much prejudiced the World against the Celibate of the Roman Clergy, which was considered as the occasion of all those Disorders; so on the other hand, the Marriage of the Clergy, and also of those of both Sexes who had taken Vows, gave great Offence. They were represented as Persons that could not master their Appetites, but that indulged themselves in Carnal Pleasures and Interests. Thus as the Scandals of the Unmarried Clergy had alienated the World much from them; so the Marriage of most of the Reformers was urged as an ill Character both of them and of the Reformation; as a Doctrine of Libertinism, that made the Clergy look too like the rest of the World, and involved them in the common Pleasures, Concerns, and Passions of Human Life.

The Appearances of an Austerity of Habit, of a Severity of Life in watching and fasting, and of avoiding the common Pleasures of Sense, and the Delights of Life that was on the other side, did strike the World, and inclined many to think, that what ill consequences soever Celibate produced, yet that these were much more supportable, and more easy to be reformed, than the ill consequences of an unrestrained Permission of the Clergy to marry.

In treating this matter, we must first consider Celibate with relation to the Laws of Christ, and the Gospel; and then with relation to the Laws of the Church. It does not seem contrary to the Purity of the Worship of God, or of Divine Performances, that Married Persons should officiate in them; since by the Law of Moses Priests not only might marry, but the Priesthood was tied to descend as an Inheritance in a certain Family. And even the High-Priest, who was to perform the great Function of the Annual Atonement that was made for the Sins of the whole Jewish Nation, was to marry, and he derived to his Descendents that Sacred Office. If there was so much as a remote unsutableness between a Married State and Sacerdotal Performances, we cannot imagine that God would by a Law tie the Priesthood to a Family, which by consequence laid an Obligation on the Priests to marry. When Christ chose his Twelve Apostles, some of them were married men; we are sure at least that St. Peter was; so that he made no distinction, and gave no preference to the unmarried: Our Saviour did no where charge them to forsake their Wives; nor did he at all represent Celibate as necessary to the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Dispensation of the Gospel: He speaks indeed of some that brought themselves to the state of Eunuchs for the sake of the Gospel;¹ but in that he left all men at full liberty, by saying, Let him receive it that is able to receive it; so that in this every man must judg of himself, by what he finds himself to be. That is equally recommended to all Ranks of men, as they can bear it. St. Paul does affirm, That Marriage is honourable in all; and to avoid Uncleanness, he says, It is better to marry than to burn; and so gives it as a Rule,² That every man should have his own Wife. Among all the Rules or Qualifications of Bishops or Priests, that are given in the New Testament, particularly in the Epistles to Timothy and Titus, there is not a word of the Celibate of the Clergy, but plain Intimations to the contrary,³ That they were and might be married. That of the Husband of one Wife, is repeated in different places: Mention is also made of the Wives and Children of the Clergy, Rules being given concerning them; and not a word is so much as insinuated, importing that this was only tolerated in the beginnings of Christianity, but that it was afterwards to cease: On the contrary, the forbidding to marry, is given as a Character of the Apostacy of the later times.⁴ We find Aquila, when he went about preaching the Gospel, was not only married to Priscilla, but that he carried her about with him: Not to insist on that Privilege that St. Paul thought he might have claimed, of carrying about with him a Sister and a Wife, as well as the other Apostles. And thus the first Point seems to be fully cleared, That by no Law of God the Clergy are debarr’d from Marriage. There is not one word in the whole Scriptures that does so much as hint at it; whereas there is a great deal to the contrary.

Marriage being then one of the Rights of Human Nature, to which so many reasons of different sorts may carry both a wise and a good man, and there being no positive Precept in the Gospel that forbids it to the Clergy; the next question is, Whether it is in the Power of the Church to make a perpetual Law, restraining the Clergy from Marriage? It is certain that no Age of the Church can make a Law to bind succeeding Ages; for whatsoever Power the Church has, she is always in possession of it; and every Age has as much Power as any of the former Ages had. Therefore if any one Age should by a Law enjoin Celibate to the Clergy, any succeeding Age may repeal and alter that Law. For ever since the Inspiration that conducted the Apostles has ceased, every Age of the Church may make or change Laws in all matters that are within their Authority. So it seems very clear, that the Church can make no perpetual Law upon this Subject.

In the next place it may be justly doubted, Whether the Church can make a Law that shall restrain all the Clergy in any of those Natural Rights in which Christ has left them free. The adding a Law upon this Head to the Laws of Christ, seems to assume an Authority that he has not given the Church. It looks like a pretending to a strain of Purity, beyond the Rules set us in the Gospel; and is plainly the laying a Yoke upon us which must be thought Tyrannical, since the Author of this Religion, who knew best what Human Nature is capable of, and what it may well bear, has not thought fit to lay it on those whom he sent upon a Commission that required a much greater Elevation of Soul, and more Freedom from the Entanglements of Worldly or Domestick Concerns, than can be pretended to be necessary for the standing and settled Offices in the Church. Therefore we conclude, That it were a great Abuse of Church-Power, and a high Act of Tyranny, for any Church, or any Age of the Church, to bar men from the Services in the Church, because they either are married, or intend to keep themselves free to marry, or not, as they please. This does indeed bring the Body of the Clergy more into a Combination among themselves; it does take them in a great measure off from having separated Interests of their own; it takes them out of the Civil Society, in which they have less concern, when they give no Pledges to it. And so in Ages in which the Papacy intended to engage the whole Priesthood into its Interests against the Civil Powers, as the Immunity and Exemptions of the Clergy made them safe in their own Persons, so it was necessary to free them from any such Incumbrances or Appendages by which they might be in the Power or at the Mercy of Secular Princes. This, joined with the belief of their making God with a few words, by the virtue of their Character, and of their forgiving Sin, was like Armour of Proof, by which they were invulnerable, and by consequence capable of undertaking any thing that might be committed to them. But this may well recommend such a Rule to a Crafty and Designing Body of Men, in which it is not to be denied, that there is a deep and refined Policy; yet we have not so learned Christ, nor to handle the Word of God, or the Authority that he has trusted to us, deceitfully.

As for the Consequences of such Laws, Inconveniences are on both hands: As long as men are corrupt themselves, so long they will abuse all the Liberties of Human Nature. If not only common Lewdness in all the kinds of it, but even brutal and unnatural Lusts, have been the visible Consequences of the strict Law of Celibate; and if this appears so evident in History that it cannot be denied; we think it better to trust Human Nature with the lawful use of that in which God has not restrained it, than to venture on that which has given occasion to Abominations that cannot be mentioned without horror. As for the Temptation to Covetousness, we think it is neither so great nor so unavoidable upon the one hand, as those monstrous ones are on the other. It is more reasonable to expect Divine Assistances to preserve men from Temptations, when they are using those Liberties which God has left free to them, than when by pretending to a Purity greater than that which he has commanded, they throw themselves into many Snares. It is also very evident, that Covetousness is an effect of Mens Tempers, rather than of their Marriage, since the Instances of a ravenous Covetousness, and of a restless Ambition, in behalf of mens Kindred and Families, hath appeared as often and as scandalously among the Vnmarried, as among the Married Clergy.

From these general Considerations concerning the Power that the Church has to make either a Perpetual or an Universal Law in a thing of this kind; I shall in the next place consider in short, What the Church has done in this matter. In the first Ages of Christianity, Basilides and Saturninus, and after them, both Montanus and Novatus, and the Sect of the Encratites, condemned Marriage as a state of Libertinism that was unbecoming the Purity required of Christians. Against those we find the Fathers asserted the Lawfulness of Marriage to all Christians, without making a difference between the Clergy and the Laity. It is true, the appearances that were in Montanus and his Followers, seem to have engaged the Christians of that Age to strain beyond them in those things that gave them their Reputation: Many of Tertullian’s Writings, that Criticks do now see were writ after he was a Montanist, which seems not to have been observed in that Age, carry the matter of Celibate so high, that it is no wonder, if considering the Reputation that he had, a Bias was given by these to the following Ages in favour of Celibate. Yet it seemed to give great and just Prejudices against the Christian Religion, if such as had come into the Service of the Church should have forsaken their Wives. It is visible how much Scandal this might have given, and what matter of Reproach it would have furnished their Enemies with, if they could have charged them with this, That men to get rid of their Wives, and of the Care of their Families, went into Orders; that so under a pretence of a higher degree of Sanctity, they might abandon their Families. Therefore great care was taken to prevent this. They were so far from requiring Priests to forsake their Wives, that such as did it upon their entring into Orders, were severely condemned by the Canons that go under the name of the Apostles. They were also condemned by the Council of Gangra in the Fourth Century, and by that of Trullo in the Seventh Age. There are some Instances brought of Bishops and Priests, who are supposed to have married after they were ordained; but as there are only few of those, so perhaps they are not well proved. It must be acknowledged that the general practice was, that men once in Orders did not marry. But many Bishops in the best Ages lived still with their Wives: So did the Fathers both of Gregory Nazianzen and of St. Basil. And among the Works of Hilary of Poictiers, there is a Letter writ by him in his Exile to his Daughter Abra, in which he refers her to her Mothers Instruction in those things which she by reason of her Age did not then understand; which shews that she was then very young, and so was probably born after he was a Bishop.

Some proposed in the Council of Nice,⁵ That the Clergy should depart from their Wives; but Paphnutius, though himself unmarried, opposed this as the laying an unreasonably heavy Yoke upon them. Heliodorus a Bishop, the Author of the first of those Love-Fables that are now known by the name of Romances, being upon that account accused of too much Levity, did in order to the clearing himself of that Imputation, move that Clergymen should be obliged to live from their Wives. Which the Historian says they were not tied to before; for till then Bishops lived with their Wives. So that in those days the living in a married state was not thought unbecoming the Purity of the Sacred Functions. A single Marriage was never objected in bar to a mans being made Bishop or Priest. They did not indeed admit a man to Orders that had been twice married; but even for this there was a distinction: If a man had been once married before his Baptism, and was once married after his Baptism, that was reckoned only a single Marriage; for what had been done when in Heathenism, went for nothing: And Jerome speaking of Bishops who had been twice married, but by this Nicety were reckoned to be the Husbands of one Wife, says, The number of those of this sort in that time could not be reckoned; and that more such Bishops might be found, than were at the Council of Arimini. Canons grew to be frequently made against the Marriage of those in Holy Orders; but these were positive Laws made chiefly in the Roman and African Synods: and since those Canons were so often renewed, we may from thence conclude that they were not well kept. When Synesius was ordained Priest, he tells in an Epistle of his, That he declared openly, that he would not live secretly with his Wife, as some did; but that he would dwell publickly with her, and wished that he might have many Children by her. In the Eastern Church the Priests are usually married before they are ordained, and continue afterwards to live with their Wives, and to have Children by them, without either Censure or Trouble. In the Western Church we find mention made both in the Gallican and Spanish Synods, of the Wives both of Bishops and Priests; and they are called Episcopae and Presbyterae. In the Saxon times the Clergy in most of the Cathedrals of England were openly married: And when Dunstan, who had engaged King Edgar to favour the Monks, in opposition to the married Clergy, pressed them to forsake their Wives, they refused to do it, and so were turned out of their Benefices, and Monks came in their places. Nor was the Celibate generally imposed on all the Clergy, before Gregory the Seventh’s time, in the end of the Eleventh Century. He had great designs for subjecting all Temporal Princes to the Papacy; and in order to that, he intended to bring the Clergy into an entire dependence upon himself, and to separate them wholly from all other Interests but those of the Ecclesiastical Authority: And that he might load the married Clergy with an odious Name, he called them all Nicolaitans: Though the accounts that the Antients give us of that Sect, say nothing that related to this matter: But a name of an ill sound goes a great way in an Ignorant Age. The Writers that lived near that time, condemn this severity against the married Clergy, as a new and a rash thing, and contrary to the mind of the holy Fathers; and they tax his rigor in turning them all out. Yet Lanfranc among us did not impose the Celibate generally on all the Clergy, but only on those that lived at Cathedrals and in Towns: He connived at those who served in Villages. Anselm carried it farther, and imposed it on all the Clergy without exception: Yet he himself laments that unnatural Lusts were become then both common and publick: Of which Petrus Damiani made great complaints in Gregory the Seventh’s time. Bernard in a Sermon preached to the Clergy of France, says it was common in his time, and then even Bishops with Bishops lived in it. The Observation that Abbot Panormitan made, of the progress of that horrid Sin, led him to wish that it might be left free to the Clergy to marry, as they pleased. Pius the Second said that there might have been good reasons for imposing the Celibate on the Clergy, but he believed there were far better reasons for leaving them to their liberty. As a remedy to these more enormous Crimes, Dispensations for Concubinate became so common, that instead of giving scandal by them, they were rather considered as the Characters of Modesty and Temperance: In such Concubinary Priests the World judged themselves safe from Practices on their own Families.

When we consider those effects that followed on the imposing the Celibate on the Clergy, we cannot but look on them as much greater evils than those that can follow on the leaving it free to them to marry. It is not to be denied but that on the other hand, the effects of a freedom to marry may be likewise bad: That State does naturally involve men in the cares of Life, in Domestick Concerns, and it brings with it Temptations both to Luxury and Covetousness. It carries with it too great a disposition to heap up Wealth, and to raise Families: and in a word, it makes the Clergy both look too like, and live too like the rest of the World. But when things of this kind are duly balanced, ill effects will appear on both hands: Those arise out of the general Corruption of Human Nature; which does so spread it self, that it will corrupt us in the most innocent and in the most necessary practices. There are Excesses committed in Eating, Drinking, and Sleeping. Our depraved Inclinations will insinuate themselves into us in our best Actions: Even the publick Worship of God and all Devotion receive a taint from them. But we must not take a way those Liberties, in which God has left human Nature free, and engage men to Rules and Methods that put a Violence upon Mankind: This is the less excusable, when we see in Fact what the consequences of such restraints have been for many Ages.

Yet after all, though they who marry, do well; yet those who marry not do better, provided they live chast, and do not burn. That man who subdues his Body by fasting and Prayer, by Labour and Study, and that separates himself from the concerns of a Family, that he may give himself wholly to the ministry of the Word,⁶ and to Prayer, that lives at a distance from the Levities of the World, and in a course of native modesty and unaffected severity, is certainly a burning and shining Light: He is above the World, free from cares and designs, from aspirings, and all those restless Projects which have so long given the World so much scandal: And therefore those who allow themselves the liberty of Marriage, according to the Laws of God and the Church, are indeed engaged in a state of many Temptations; to which if they give way, they lay themselves open to many Censures; and they bring a Scandal on the Reformation for allowing them this Liberty, if they abuse it.

It remains only to consider how far this matter is altered by Vows; how far it is lawful to make them; and how far they bind when they are made. It seems very unreasonable and tyrannical to put Vows on any, in matters in which it may not be in their power to keep them without sin. No Vows ought to be made, but in things that are either absolutely in our power, or in things in which we may procure to our selves those Assistances that may enable us to perform them. We have a federal Right to the Promises that Christ has made us, of inward Assistances to enable us to perform those Conditions that he has laid on us; and therefore we may vow to observe them, because we may do that which may procure us Aids sufficient for the execution of them. But if men will take up Resolutions that are not within those necessary Conditions, they have no reason to promise themselves such Assistances: And if they are not so absolutely Masters of themselves, as to be able to stand to them without those helps, and yet are not sure that they shall be given them, then they ought to make no Vow in a matter which they cannot keep by their own Natural Strength, and in which they have not any Promise in the Gospel that assures them of Divine Assistances to enable them to keep it. This is therefore a tempting of God, when men pretend to serve him, by assuming a stricter Course of Life than either he has commanded, or they are able to go through with. And it may prove a great Snare to them, when by such rash Vows they are engaged into such a state of Life, in which they live in constant Temptations to Sin, without either Command or Promise, on which they can rest as to the execution of them.

This is to lead themselves into Temptation, in opposition to that which our Saviour has made a Petition of that Prayer which he himself has taught us. Out of this, great distractions of Mind, and a variety of different Temptations may, and probably will arise; and that the rather, because the Vow is made; there being somewhat in our Natures that will always struggle the harder, because they are restrained. It is certain that every man who dedicates himself to the Service of God, ought to try if he can dedicate himself so entirely to it, as to live out of all the Concerns and Entanglements of Life. If he can maintain his Purity in it, he will be enabled thereby to labour the more effectually, and may expect both the greater Success here, and a fuller Reward hereafter. But because both his Temper and his Circumstances may so change, that what is an advantage to him in one part of his Life, may be a snare and an Incumbrance to him in another part of it, he ought therefore to keep this matter still in his own power, and to continue in that Liberty in which God has left him free, that so he may do as he shall find it to be most expedient for himself, and for the work of the Gospel.

Therefore it is to be concluded, That it is unlawful either to impose, or to make such Vows. And supposing that any have been engaged in them, more perhaps out of the Importunity or Authority of others, than their own choice; then, though it is certainly a Character of a man that shall dwell in God’s holy Hill, That though he swears to his own hurt, yet he changes not; he is to consider whether he can keep such a Vow, without breaking the Commandments of God,⁷ or not: If he can, then certainly he ought to have that regard to the Name of God, that was called upon in the Vow, and to the Solemnities of it, and to the Scandals that may follow upon his breaking it, that if he can continue in that state without sinning against God, he ought to do it, and to endeavour all he can to keep his Vow, and preserve his Purity: But if after he has used both Fasting and Prayer, he still finds that the obligation of his Vow is a snare to him, and that he cannot both keep it, and also keep the Commandments of God; then the two Obligations, that of the Law of God, and that of his Vow, happening to stand in one anothers way, certainly the lesser must give place to the greater.⁸ Herod’s Oath was ill, and rashly made, but worse kept, when for his Oath’s sake he ordered the Head of John the Baptist to be cut off. Our Saviour condemns that practice among the Jews, of vowing that to the Corban or Treasure of the Temple, which they ought to have given to their Parents, and imagining that by such means they were not obliged to take care of them, or to supply them. The obligation to keep the Commandments of God is indispensible, and antecedent to any Act or Vow of ours, and therefore it cannot be made void by any Vow that we may take upon us: And if we are under a Vow which exposes us to Temptations that do often prevail, and that probably will prevail long upon us, then we ought to repent of our rashness in making any such Vow; but must not continue in the observation of it, if it proves to us like the taking Fire into our Bosom, or the handling of Pitch. A Vow that draws many Temptations upon us, that are above our strength to resist them, is certainly much better broken and repented of, than kept. So that to conclude, Celibate is not a matter fit to be the Subject either of a Law or a Vow; every man must consider himself, and what he is able to receive: He that marries does well, but he that marries not does better.

Footnotes

1. Matth. 19.10, 11, 12. ↩

2. Heb. 13.4. 1 Cor. 7.9. ↩

3. 1 Tim. 3.2, 4, 5, 12. ↩

4. 1 Tim. 4.3. 1 Cor. 9.5. ↩

5. Socr. Hist. Eccl. lib. 1. c. 12. ↩

6. Acts 6.4. ↩

7. Psal. 15.4. ↩

8. Matth. 14.9. Matth. 15.5. ↩