of the grossest kind. Some Priests, according to the Council of Mentz, in the year 888, "had sons by their own sisters." Bin. 7. 137. Labb. 11. 586.

The Council of Nice and some others of a later date, through fear of scandal, deprived the Clergy of all female company, except a mother, a sister, or an aunt, who, it was reckoned, were beyond all suspicion. But the means intended for prevention, was the occasion of more accumulated scandal and more heinous criminality. The interdiction was the introduction to incestuous and unnatural prostitution. The Council of Mentz, therefore, in its 10th Canon, as well as other cotemporary and late Synods, had to forbid the Clergy the society of even their nearest female relations.

A third variety for the evasion, or rather for the infraction of these Canonical interdictions, was clandestine or avowed matrimony. Some of the Priests who still had some remains of conscience, shuddered at the commission of fornication, adultery, or incest; and had recourse, therefore, to the honorable institution of marriage. The number of these continued to increase in opposition to the Decretals of Popes, the Canons of Councils, and the prepossessions of the people. Epiph. H. 59. Jerom adv. Vig, Thom. I. 43.

Such was the state of Clerical matrimony, at the accession of Hildebrand or Gregory VII. to the Popedom, in the year 1074. The reign of this hierarch commenced a new era in the annals of Sacerdotal celibacy. Gregory enforced celibacy with a high hand among the Latin Ecclesiastics; and was supported in the undertaking by many of the laity. The attempt, however, was long opposed by the Priesthood: and its success terminated in the general concubinage and debauchery of the Western Clergy.

Gregory succeeded, to a great extent, in the suppression of Priestly marriage. Several of his predecessors had made a similar attempt, but in vain. Stephen, Nicholas, and Alexander, had labored for this purpose, and failed. But Gregory proceeded in this, as in every other design, with superior ability, perseverance, and resolution; and

cess.

his efforts were crowned, in the end, with wonderful sucHe summoned a Council, and issued Canons, separating the married Clergy from their partners, and forbidding the ordination of any who would not vow perpetual continence. He prohibited the laity from hearing Mass, when celebrated by a married Priest. Bin. 7. 473. Bruy. 2. 388. 418. Labb. 12. 547. Du Pin, 2. 244.

Such swelling innovations, and such severe enactments against marriage in the Clergy, caused all Popish Christendom to be polluted with Sacerdotal profligacy of the deepest dye, as is evident from the relations of Bernard, Agrippa, Henry, Clemangis, and Mezeray. Bernard the Saint of Clairvaux, in the 12th century, admitted and lamented the licentiousness of the Prelacy and Priesthood, "who committed, in secret, such acts of turpitude as would be shameful to express." Bernard, 1725-1728.

Clemangis reckoned the adultery, impurity, and obscenity of the Clergy, beyond all description. They frequented the stews and taverns, and spent their whole time in eating, drinking, reveling, gaming, and dancing. Surfeited and drunk, these Sacerdotal sensualists fought, shouted, roared, rioted, and blasphemed God and the Saints; and passed, shortly after, from the embrace of the harlot, to the altar of God. Clemangis, through shame, drew the curtain over the abominations that the Nuns practised in their Convents, which he called brothels of licentiousness. To veil a woman was, in that age, to prostitute her.

For further details relative to the shocking depravity of the Popish Clergy during the succeeding centuries, and up to the time of the Reformation, for brevity sake, I refer the reader to Henry, Clemangis, Mezeray, and other historians of those days, whose annals are stained with the universal depravity of the Romish hierarchy; Popes, Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Monks, and Nuns, are all included.

Lest the weight of the above testimonies should be considered by the Papists as insufficient, we will add to it that of their venerable Councils. The Council of Valladolid, in the year 1322, in its 7th Canon, confirms all that is

stated above. "The Clergy," (according to this Council,) "prodigal of character and salvation, led lives of enormity and profligacy in public concubinage." The Canon of Valladolid was renewed in the year 1473, in the Council of Toledo. This Council represented the clergy as living in the filthiest atrocity, which rendered them contemptible to the people. Labb. 15. 247. Several other Councils, which for brevity sake have to be omitted, also thun-. dered out their Bulls and Decrees against the licentiousness of the Priestly marauders.

The Italian and Roman Clergy appear, of all others, to have been the most licentious. Dachery, I. 354.

A select Council of Cardinals and Bishops assembled by Paul 3d, in the year 1538, have drawn a picture of the Roman courtezans, and the attention paid them by the Roman Clergy. These courtezans lived in splendid palaces, walked or rode as matrons through the city, and were attended at noonday by a train of the Clergy and the nobility, the friends of the Cardinals. Crabb, 3. 823. Coss. 5. 547.

To put the climax to all these abominations, we find that even the very Prelates themselves assembled in General Councils were as licentious, abandoned, and guilty as the Priests in their dispersed capacity. This was exemplified in the General Councils of Lyons, Constance, and Basil. The Council of Lyons demoralized the city in which it was convened. Cardinal Hugo, in a speech to the citizens, immediately after the dissolution of the Sacred Synod, boasted that Lyons, at the meeting of the assembly, contained two or three stews; but, at its departure, comprehended only one; which, however, extended without interruption, from the Eastern to the Western Gate. Labb. 16. 1436. Bruy. 4. 39. Labb. 16. 1435. Edgar.

We shall now turn to the Decrees of Pope Benedict XIV. ás recorded by the great St. Ligori; either of which authorities, no Papist will dare to call in question. By these documents we shall see that the Popish Clergy are still what they ever have been, men of morals the most

corrupt; and men too, of all others, who are not to be trusted alone with females.

The Decrees to which I allude, of the Sovereign Pontiff Benedict XIV. are recorded by the great St. Ligori, in his Theological Treatise, Tom. ix. De Rom. Pont. Decr. cap. 2. The Decrees are headed thus: "Contra SOLLICITANTES," &c. et "CONTRA EXQUIRENTES,” &c. "Against those Priests who entice others to sin, and who abuse the sacrifice of the Mass," &c.

In respect to one of the Decrees, the Saint, speaking of the Sovereign Pontiff Benedict XIV. says, "Our Most Holy Lord," (the Pope,) "seeing how great is the sin of those lost men," (alluding to the Priests,) "who abuse the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and the Sacrament of Confession, which was instituted for the salvation of the faithful, but which they make use of for their destruction and damnation"-" Decrees, that hereafter all Priests, both secular and regular, of whatever Order, Institution, Congregation, or Society soever they may be, who solicit those whose Confessions they hear, to filthy and criminal actions, shall, besides the penalties already threatened by the Canon Law, the Apostolical Constitutions, and especially by the Constitutions of Sixtus V. and Gregory XV. of happy memory, shall, we decree, incur the perpetual inability of celebrating the aforesaid Holy Sacrifice of the Mass."

The other Decree was issued by the Pope, in order to put a check to a custom that was common among the Priests in Spain, of compelling their penitents, in the tribunal of Confession, to tell them who were their accomplices in sin. It is stated in the Decree that the Ghostly Fathers were so pertinaciously bent on ascertaining the names and the residence of those with whom their penitents were in the habit of committing sin, that, not content with merely soliciting them to tell them where their accomplices lived, they were compelled to do it, by not granting them the absolution of their sins. "Which intolerable IMPUDENCE!" (says the Pope,) "they color over, under the pretext that they wish to visit them merely to give them good advice!" "IAM VERO!" exclaims the

Holy Father, the Pope, "experience has taught us what evils have followed from such a course as this!" [Ligori Theol. T. ix. De Rom. Pont. Decr. c. 2.]

Ligori has also presented us with another Decree of this same Pontiff, entitled "SUPER CLAUSURA MONIALIUM."

By this Decree, all Clergymen, of whatsoever dignity they may be, are strictly prohibited from entering into Nunneries, or from having any communication with the Nuns, under any pretext whatever.

It appears, from what the Saint writes, that this Decree of Benedict XIV. is no more than a renewed promulgation of Decrees which had already frequently been made, relative to the same subject, by many of his predecessors, and especially by the Holy Council of Trent.

"Exceptis dumtaxat." The only exception that is made to this interdiction, is respecting the Superiors of those Establishments, that is, those Clergymen under whose immediate jurisdiction the Nuns are placed; and even in regard to these, the Decree is as follows: "in cassibus tamen necessariis, et servatis de jure servandis, et non aliter omnino," they, the superiors, are to have no intercourse with the Nuns, "except in cases of necessity, observing, at the same time, the Rules laid down by the Canons, but otherwise, they are by no means whatsoever to have any intercourse together." (Id. ib.)

The rules laid down by the Canons, which are here spoken of, are, that Priests shall never hear the Confessions of Nuns in a private or clandestine manner, but openly, in the Confessional-boxes, in the Chapel.

So much importance was attached to the observance of these mandates, that those Priests who dared to infringe them, incurred, " ipso facto," the Censures of the church, from which no one could absolve them but the Sovereign Pontiff himself, except at the hour of death. (Id. ib. D. vi.)

The aforesaid Decrees were given, SUB ANNULO PISCATORIS," "under the ring of the Fisherman," the one, on the 4th of the Nones of June, A. D. 1746, the other, on the 3d of January, 1742.

The great St. Basil, it seems, knew as much about the