of saints and the forgiveness of sins lie close together in the Creed'!! Again

'They who deny the merit of virginity leave out a portion of Christian morals. The Bible-this writer acknowledges-' says nothing about monks and nuns; but it says a great deal about prayer, and about taking up the cross. It is quite true that the cross has sanctified domestic affections, by raising mar

ing, or the grave of one dead child, than in years of fasting and flagellation.

We repeat that we have not the least apprehension of the ultimate, or even the extensive success of these doctrines here ;their only bad effect will be to make a few young men very miserable, very sour tempered, and very arrogant; and on the other hand they may perhaps prevent some early and imprudent marriages.

riage to a dignity which it never possessed before; and yet human affections are terrible things; love is as strong and insatiable as But abroad, in the bosom of the Roman death; and how hard is it to love as though Catholic Church, murmurs both loud and we loved not; and to weep, as though we deep are again heard against the law of cewept not; and to laugh, as though we laugh- libacy. It is not only the priest Ronge, ed not. Happy are they to whom human af who has absolutely seceded from the Church fections are not all joy; the mother has her cross as well as the nun, and it will be of Rome, and appealed to the good sense blessed to her. Happy they who have to tend and truthfulness of Germany against the the sick bed of a parent or a friend; they need seamless coat of our Lord, which in the seek no further, they have their cross. Yet nineteenth century the Archbishop of Trehappiest of all is she, who is marked out for ves thought fit to exhibit, and which in the ever from the world, whose slightest action as-nineteenth century was visited by above a sumes the character of adoration, because she is bound by a vow to her heavenly spouse, as an earthly bride is bound by the nuptial vow to her earthly lord.'

million of worshippers. The clergy of Baden some years ago published a deliberate argument, to which a reply † was made by the late Professor Möhler, the author of the For ourselves we rest content with the Symbolik; a reply written with his usual Christian perfection of the Bible. Accord- ability and polemic skill. Even in his own ing to the plain principles of that book, we Church, the arguments and authority of this believe that the most 'enskyed and sainted distinguished logician have had little or no nun' (in Spakspeare's beautiful words) is effect in suppressing these opinions: they as far below, in true Christian perfection, are day after day gaining ground. But we we will say the mother of St. Augustine, or may be sure that Möhler would be accepted the wife who sucked the poison from her by all moderate and learned Roman Cathohusband's wound, even, in due proportion, lic writers as in every respect qualified to as he who went into the wilderness to him do justice to his cause. Möhler's great arwho went about doing good.' Who will gument is, that the Church has the right compare the fugitive and cloistered virtue' not merely to lay before those whom she of the recluse with that of the sister of cha- exalts to the dignity of the priesthood, but rity? Yet will the virginity of the latter to exact, as a qualification for that dignity, weigh in the Evangelic balance one grain in comparison with her charity?

Another writer is not content with elevating the unnatural state, but must depreciate those natural affections, to be void of which,' we have high authority to believe, is no safe condition.

'After casting our eyes on the holy rood, does it never occur to us to wonder how it can be possible to be saved in the midst of the endearments of a family, and the joys of domestic life? God forbid that any one should deny the possibility!-but does it not at first sight require proof that heaven can be won by a life spent in this quiet way ?-Life of St. Stephen Harding, p. 113.

We will tell this unhappy man that there is more true religiou, more sense of God's goodness, more humble resignation to his chastening hand, from the sight of one liv

the highest ideal of Christianity. But this assumes the point at issue. If it be not the ideal of the Sacred Writings-if it be the ideal of a false philosophy not recognised by the

* Two German Professors at Bonn have published a curious tract on this seamless coat of Treves and the twenty other seamless coats, the history of which they have traced with true German perseverance and erudition. It is a calm disquisition in an excellent tone; its historicotheological learning relieved by quiet irony. It is somewhat amusing to find that the Infallible Gregory XVI. issued a Letter, asserting the authenticity of the seamless coat of Argenteuil, not remembering that the Infallible Leo. X. had asserted the authenticity of that of Treves; while other Infallible Pontiffs have given their approbation to the list of relics in the church of St. John Lateran, where there is a third. gesprochen-say our Professors. The tract is reprinted in Möhler's' Gesamelte Scriften,' i, band, pp. 177-267.

Rom hat

Sacred Writings. but almost universally do- testimony absolutely unquestionable. And minant in the intellectual world, into which that such tenets, so directly opposed to the Christianity passed almost immediately af- law, the history, and the actual predomiter its first complete publication-and if nant state of Jewish feeling, should so have that false philosophy be now utterly discard-grown up, is in itself very extraordinary, ed from the human mind-the conclusion and shows the wonderful power which these is inevitable.

It may be assumed that the great ideal truth, which distinguishes any system, will pervade that system throughout; that if not objectively prominent in every part, it shall be found in its depths, wherever we sound them; that it will be, if not uniformly and explicitly, perpetually implied; that it shall be not casually and incidentally noticed, but fill that place which becomes its importance; and, above all, must be in perfect harmony with the rest of the revelaBut for this principle, upon which the ideal dignity of celibacy rests, the monastics can refer only to two insulated and ambiguous passages in the whole New Tes

tion.

tenets possessed of seizing and enthralling the human mind. The Priesthood, the High Priesthood itself, was hereditary; the Levites were in no way exempt from the great duty, in some respects the postive law, of continuing their race; throughout the Old Testament we have no trace of the sanctity of celibacy: barrenness in all women was a curse; and this feeling (for who might not be mother of the Messiah ?) still in general prevailed among the Jews. This part of the Essenian doctrine was the strongest proof of the growth of foreign opinions. This therefore was a point on which the new religion would, it might be expected, authoritatively pronounce, if accordant with its design; accept with disThis is the more remarkable, if it was tinct approval, define with precise limitanot a new truth, of which the primary tions, make it in fact an integral and inconception dawned as it were upon the separable part of the faith. Such it was world under the new dispensation. No- when it became the doctrine of the Church, tions absolutely uncongenial with the state after several centuries: it was then virtualof the human mind, might, according to ly and practically a part of the religion. the customary dealings of Divine Provi- A Jovinian or Vigilantius of the fourth dence, have been introduced with caution, century might appeal to reason or to Scripif we may so say, bordering on timidity; ture against it; but even they would hardbut this would hardly be the case with ly deny that it was a dominant tenet in questions which might seem to await a sol- Christendom. emn and indisputable decision from the new Teacher of righteousness.

tament.*

The great question of the superiority of the celibate and contemplative state over that of marriage and of active life-the philosophy or theology, whichever it may be called, which proscribed marriage, and exalted celibacy, as withdrawing the soul from the pollution of malignant matter, had already made its way among the Jews both of Egypt and Palestine: it was the doctrine of the Essenes and Therapeuta, who, even if we do not allow them to be the parents, were at least the types and the forerunners of Christian monarchism.

But even that highest sanction, our Lord's own conduct in the choice of his disciples, was wanting to this tenet. The chief of his apostles, St. Peter, certainly had no claim to this ideal perfection; nor does there appear the least evidence in the Gospel, that up to a certain period, either by his language, or by his preference of those who possessed this qualification, the Saviour had inculcated, or even suggested, any belief in its superior sanctity. The one occasion on which he spoke on the subject was that related in the 19th chapter of St. Matthew. Questions had been brought before him relating to marriage and diThat such tenets had already grown up vorce. The purer and more severe moralamong the Jews we have the historicality of our Lord condemned without reserve testimony of both the two great Jewish that fatal facility of divorce which was perwriters of the times-of Josephus and Phi- mitted by the less rigid Pharisaic school. lo (to say nothing of Pliny and others) Adultery alone, according to his commandment, dissolved the holy and irrepealable marriage tie. But his disciples, bred, it should seem, under the laxer system, appear to have clung strangely to the easier doctrine. Their doubts assumed the fol

We say two, because, though often quoted, the third (Rev. xiv. 4) is, to our judgment, clearly metaphorical: it is not physical pollution, but the pollution by idolatry which is meant, See Rosenmüller in loco, or the common Family Bible.

:

lowing form:-'If this be the case, if mar- words, considered with relation to his riage be so inflexible, so inexorable; if the times, and without the bias given by the wife is to be dismissed for no lighter cause, long-fostered admiration of celibacy during for no other vice, men would be wise not certain ages of the Church. And in this to load themselves with this intolerable view the language of our Lord is strictly burthen.' To this our Lord appears to coincident with the second passage, that reply-All persons are not capable of re- of St. Paul to the Corinthians. This chapfraining from marriage. Some are espe- ter (1st Epist. vii.) was written in answer cially designated by the divine will for this to certain questions relating to marriage, peculiar distinction; some are born dis- proposed to him by some of the Corinthian qualified for marriage; others are made so Christians. It does not appear in what by human art; others, from some religious spirit or by whom those questions were motives, disqualify themselves. For all submitted to St. Paul; whether from a sound interpreters concur in taking this dis- Judaizing party, who, like many of their qualification not in its literal sense, but as countrymen, might hold the absolute duty a voluntary abstinence from marriage. At of marriage at a certain time of life; or in first sight it might seem a natural interpre- the spirit of that incipient Gnosticism which tation, as our Lord speaks in the present the apostles had to encounter in other sects tense-there are, not there will be, those who altogether proscribed marriage. Paul who in expectation of the coming of the was unmarried; other apostles, St. Peter Messiah (for the Kingdom of Heaven's himself, (ch. ix. 5,) were not only married sake) abstain altogether from marriage- but accompanied by their wives. The lanthat he might in fact have alluded to those guage of St. Paul* is something like a vinof the Essenes, or the other hermits, who, dication of his own course; though he asaccording to Josephus, had retired to soli-serts the advantage, perhaps the merit, tary cells in the desert and in them the most undoubtedly not the absolute perfecgreat dominant expectation of the coming tion of celibacy, he excepts no class from Messiah was at its sublimest height. The the right, or even the duty of marriage, if absorption of the soul, as it were, in this they have neither the gift nor the power act of faith; the entire devotion of the be- of continency. But St. Paul himself reing, with the sacrifice of the ordinary ties turns to the main question, that of virginias well as avocations of life, to the contem- ty; and in terms which appear to us clear plation of the kingdom of God, was the and distinct, instead of a general and unilofty privilege of but this chosen few. But versal precept of Christianity, limits his if we include the future sense, and with own words to temporary and local admonimost interpreters give a kind of prophetic tion, called forth by some peculiar exigensignificance to our Lord's words, the meaning will be, that some men for the promotion of the kingdom of God, the propagation of the Gospel, will abstain from marriage; they will willingly make this sacrifice if they are thereby disencumbered of earthly ties, and more able to devote their whole souls to the grand object of their mission. But it is this lofty sense of duty, in which lies the sublimity of the sacrifice, not necessarily in any special dignity of the sacrifice itself, excepting in so far as it may be more hard to flesh and blood than other trials. He whom duty calls, and who receives power from on high (he that is able to receive it let him receive it) is by this as by every other sacrifice for the cause, and through the love of Christ, thereby fulfilling the ideal of Christianity-which is the annihilation of self for the promotion of the Gospel and the good of man.

cy of the times. I suppose, therefore, that this is good for the present distress; I say that it is good for a man so to be.' The meaning of these words, dia tv Éveσtãσav vya, is the key to the whole passage. Möhler, it is true, endeavors to get over this difficulty, by an interpretation, to which we will venture to say no such scholar could be reduced but by hard necessity. He interprets the reoradar avúyeny as what is commonly called in theological language, concupiscence; and as that is perpetual and inextinguishable in human nature, so he would infer the perpetuity and universality of the precept. But this notion is hardly worthy of refutation. What then was this 'distress?' It was something instant-either some actually

*Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me it is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let eveThis is to us unquestionably the impres-ry man have his own wife, and let every woman sion which is conveyed by our Lord's have her own husband.'

pressing calamity, or one imminent and in- | Jerusalem with the images which shadowevitable. But the Corinthian Church, it is ed forth the Last Day, so his apostles blendsaid, was not then under any immediate ed the uncertainty of life-its peculiar unapprehension of persecution. Locke, no certainty to those who at any time might doubt among the most sober and cautious become objects of persecution-with the interpreters, does not scruple to suppose final consummation in the second coming that the apostle had a prophetic anticipa- of the Lord. Awe was perhaps not always tion of the Neronian persecution. But precise and distinct in the language in even those who reject this explanation must which this truth was expressed :-it was admit that it would not need either the sa- still less so in the interpretation of that gacity or the experience of Paul to per- language by the hearer. But it was quite ceive that the state of the Christians, op- enough to justify the expression, the preposed as they were to all the religious and sent distress, the vṛotãoɑv úvúyeyr, at least all the political prejudices of the world, during the apostolic age. With this view was one of perpetual danger. Already, the words for the time is short' (is draweven in Corinth, tumults had arisen out of ing closely in), ὅτι ὁ καιρὸς συνεσταλμένος τὸ their progress in the public favor; already loлóv fσTIV, and the whole of the verses they had been before the tribunal of Gallio; from the 29th to the 38th, nagaya yờo̟ tỏ and though the Roman governor then treated σχῆμα τοῦ κόσμου τούτου, not fully rendered them with haughty indifference, and their by the fashion of this world passeth away,' enemies at that time were only their compat- remarkably coincide. riots the Jews, yet it was impossible not to foresee that their further success must lead to some fearful crisis. Their whole life was at war with the world; and although a quiet Chistian community might not always be exposed to the same perils as the apostle, yet they could not but be under constant apprehension; distress, if not actually present, was perpetually imminent.

It is not, then, the preoccupation alone of the marriage state which might divert either husband or wife from religious thoughts-the conflict between the desire to please each other and perfect devotion to religion-but the anxieties likewise, the trembling of deep love for others rather than themselves, which then rendered the unmarried life the safer condition. It is But there is a singular likeness in the not merely a carefulness on account of the expression of St. Paul to that of a passage ordinary trials and uncertainties of life in. St Luke's Gospel, which may perhaps from which the apostle desires to keep lead us to a more definite sense-ora yug them free-but a peculiar carefulness, beúváyeŋ peyákn éxì in ys (c. xxi. 23). This longing to that especial time and to their is part of the awful prophecy, in which the peculiar circumstances. The trumpet may destruction of Jerusalem, and the second sound at any hour. The Christian soldier coming of the Messiah, are mingled up in should be girt and ready, unincumbered terrific and almost inseparable images. with unnecessary ties; with no fears, no There can be no doubt that this second anxieties but for himself; no bonds to coming of Christ was perpetually present break but those of life. On the whole, in to the minds of the first Christians: the short, this is neither a general law of apostles themselves were but slowly eman Christianity-nor even its perfect ideal, cipated from this primary Jewish concep- though attainable by few-an eminent and tion of the immediate and visible kingdom transcendent gift and privilege, which of the Messish. St. Paul was obliged to shows its first principles in their most full allay the terrors of his disciples, who had development. It is exceptional in time, inferred from his ordinary preaching that place, person, circumstance. The merit is it was clearly and inevitably at hand (2 not intrinsic, but dependent on foreign and Thess. ii. 2). Certain signs were to pre- peculiar accidents. If marriage disqualicede that coming, and the believer is re- fies in the slightest degree for greater useminded that to God time is nothing. But fulness-if marriage withdraws the mind still the images are left in the thoughts of from holiness-then it must be sacrificed, the believer in all their unmitigated ter- as the right hand or the right eye is to be rors; and they were renewed, or renewed sacrificed: but as the maimed man is not themselves, at every period of peril or of better than the whole, so celibacy in itself persecution. Even as our Lord mingled has neither superior dignity nor superior up, or allowed to remain mingled, those sanctity. fearful predictions of the destruction of

Who can point out any thing in the earli

est Christian institutions which in any way | Nor is this a casual and isolated expression. secludes the virgins as a separate and high- In the fuller statement of the epistle to er class from Christian wives and Christian Timothy-in what we may fairly consider mothers; which distinguishes to his advan- to be St. Paul's abstract ideal of a bishop, tage the unmarried from the married apos- there is not merely the same expressive sitle; which sets the unmarried Paul above lence as to the obligation, cr even the exthe married Cephas ?-Compare the signifi- cellence of celibacy, but again we find his cant caution of the apostle's expression marriage distinctly taken for granted (1 with any passage taken at random from Tim. iii 2). Here, again, not merely is Basil, Ambrose, or any of the writers on he held up as the exemplary husband but these subjects in the fourth century; and the exemplary parent: his family seems a who will fail to perceive that it is with matter of course. He is to be one that them not merely the development (the fa- ruleth well his own house, having his chilvorite phrase) of a recognized principle, dren in subjection with all gravity.'* but a new element predominating over and There is no doubt that the false Philosoabsorbing the opinions and feelings of our phy or Theology-the common parent of nature? This is still more conclusive, if Gnosticism, or Monasticism, and of all the we observe certain positive and direct pre- high notions on celibacy-was at least in cepts of St. Paul. Not merely are there its elements widely disseminated, and could several passages, where, if this notion was not but be known to St. Paul; yet not present to the apostle's mind, either as a merely was it not admitted, but repudiated necessary part of Christianity, or as its by him with remarkable vehemence. Forhighest aim and prerogative, it must have bidding to marry and abstinence from cerforced itself into his language-yet we tain meats (1 Tim. iv. 3) is the distinctive have nothing of it. Not merely is he on mark of some sect, either already beginsuch occasions profoundly silent, but his ning to develop itself, or prophetically general precepts on the other side are clear foreshown, as in direct antagonism to the and unambiguous. If we might suppose Gospel. The Gnostic sects in the second the apostle to have contemplated in any century followed out these principles to exquarter the peaceful and permanent estab- treme extravagance; some Encratites are lishment of the Gospel; if any where he said absolutely to have proscribed marriage, deliberately organized a Church with its and to have abstained, with a Budhist averministry, and described the qualifications sion, from every kind of food which had had of a settled teacher, of a separate clergy; it life. But with a higher wisdom Paul did is in that calm epistle to Titus, in which not, like the later uninspired preachers of he consigns to him the establishment of the Church, receive the Philosophy and atthe Church in Crete. Throughout this tempt to avoid the conclusions; incorpoepistle it is the Christian family which St. rate the primary doctrine of the Gnostics Paul seems to delight in surveying in all its with the thoughts and feelings, and problamelessness and harmony. But is either scribe its excesses. There is a singular the Elder or the Bishop a being standing vacillation in some of the earlier lccal and alone and above this household virtue? particular councils, condemning those who He is its very model and pattern. Despe- but carried out admitted principles to their rate ingenuity may explain away any pas- legitimate consequences; now depreciatsage in Scripture; but none can suffering, now asserting, the dignity of marriage; greater violence than does that simple text, establishing not merely different laws and a the Bishop must be the husband of one different discipline for the clergy and laity, wife,' when it is construed as meaning any but a different morality, a different estimate thing but that, in salutary contrast to the of moral excellence. And this was the first habits of a licentious time, he is to be a husband of unimpeachable purity, even as he is a man of unimpeachable sobriety.

Chrysostom's Commentary on this passagee is in these words, in loc. t. iv. p. 387. ed. Sav.: τίνος ἕνεκεν καὶ τὸν τοιοῦτον εἰς μέσον παράγει : επιστομίζει τοὺς αἱρετικοὺς, τοὺς τὸν γάμον διαβάλλοντας, δεικνὺς ὅτι τὸ πρᾶγμα οὐκ ἔστιν ἐναγὲς, ἀλλ ̓ οὕτω τίμιον ὡς μετ ̓ αὐτοῦ δύνασθαι καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν ἅγιον ἀναβαίνειν θρόνον. He proceeds to condemn severely second marriages.

* Mr. H. Drummond, who is so strikingly right Tim. iii. 2-5 Whence the judgment of God when he is right, thus comments on the text 1 plainly is, that wherever there is a body of clergy who have no families to govern, the e is a body eminently incapacitated from guiding the Church of God; albeit it might be wise and merciful in a bishop not to ordain any missionary or evange. list for heathen lands who had a wife and family to care for.'-Abstract Principles of Revealed Religion, p. 228.