so good a work. Of all nations the imputation of parsimony in religious or charitable undertakings is least applicable to the English, and of all times to our own.

Before we proceed to consider this question in its most important bearing, it will be proper to notice what Dr. Lingard✶ has quoted from Lord Bacon in support of his argument for the celibacy of the clergy: "He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune, for they are impediments to great enterprises either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of the greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or the childless man, which, both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public." Thus far he has quoted,.. and he has not quoted what follows: "yet it were great reason that those that have children should have greatest care of future times, unto which they know they must transmit their dearest pledges." The Roman Catholic historian tells us again, in Bacon's words, that "unmarried men are best friends, best masters, best servants,"... and he omits what follows: "but not always best subjects." He quotes the convenient sen

* Anglo-Saxon Church, p. 76.

tence, a single life doth well with churchmen; for charity will hardly water the ground where it must first fill a pool:" and he does not continue with the great author, who proceeds to say, "it is indifferent for judges and magistrates, for if they be facile and corrupt, you shall have a servant five times worse than a wife. For soldiers, I find the generals commonly in their hortatives put men in mind of their wives and children. And I think the despising of marriage among the Turks maketh the vulgar soldiers more base. Certainly wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity: and single men, though they be many times more charitable, because their means are less exhaust; yet on the other side, they are more cruel and hard-hearted (GOOD TO MAKE SEVERE INQUISITORS)* because their tenderness is not so oft called upon." Thus, Sir, the Essay to which Dr. Lingard refers for an opinion of the very highest authority in favour of the celibacy of the clergy, points out thus expressly two of the strong and insuperable objections against it.

It was not till the great scheme of Papal ambition was developed that this celibacy was rigorously enforced. Then indeed it became

* Bacon's Essays, viii. p. 36—38. Edit. 1639.

a part of that scheme to enforce it, and a necessary part. Nor can it be doubted that the consequences at which Bacon has pointed were intended as well as foreseen.

of temporal supremacy was

When the claim advanced for the

Pope as King of Kings and Lord of Lords, to whom, as Vice-God, the rule of the whole world belonged, and every creature owed obedience,...such a claim could at no time have been supported unless the clergy had every where been taught to disregard their natural allegiance, and prefer their order to their country whenever any contention arose between the Sovereign and the Bishop of Rome. It was for the interest of Rome to educate such subjects as the Saints Dunstan and Becket, as the propagandists of treason Cardinal Allen and Father Persons, and as the missionaries who went forth from their seminaries to plot against the life of the sovereign and the security of the state. The policy of Rome required such subjects. And when the spirit of religious inquiry, which never could be totally supprest, was to be kept down by a persecution exceeding in extent and cruelty those of all the Heathen Emperors,...when Inquisitors were to accompany the armies of

the faith, for the purpose of completing by fire the work of extirpation which the sword had begun,...and when Holy Offices were to be established for hunting down Jews and heretics, and delivering them over to the secular arm, then indeed the Romish Church required for its ministers men who had been excluded from the "discipline of humanity," whose cords of sympathy with their fellow-creatures had been cut and seared, and who, by shutting the heart against all natural affections, had (in the emphatic idiom of the Prophet) "corrupted their compassions." Thus far the object was completely attained. The men who were enlisted in the ranks of the Romish Church renounced their national character as effectually in deed as they explicitly in word renounced their individual will when they entered into any of the monastic orders. They were no longer English, French, Germans, Spaniards, or Italians, but Churchmen. And whether Benedictines or Augustinians, Franciscans or Dominicans, Carmelites or Jesuits, however mutually inimical and envious, they were Churchmen still. Their sympathy was with each other, not with their country, nor with their kind. And the Court of Rome had by this means its em

bodied and trained and sworn supporters, ready for any service wherein it might think proper to employ them.

Such were the political effects of compelling the clergy to celibacy, and thereby separating them from the other classes of society. It was necessary for the papal system that they should be insulated among their fellow countrymen and their fellow creatures; and that remorseless Church was regardless of all other consequences. A wide spreading immorality was the inevitable result. Upon this point we may appeal to popular opinion, being one of the few points on which it may be trusted. Before the Reformation the clergy in this country were as much the subjects of ribald tales and jests for the looseness of their lives, as they were in all other Roman Catholic countries, and still are in those wherever any freedom of speech can be indulged. Wherever the Reformation was established this reproach has been done away. Amid all the efforts which are made to bring the Church of England into contempt and hatred, there is no attempt to revive it. The general decorum and respectability of the clergy as a body of men is so well known and undeniable, that even slander and faction have not assailed them on that score.