To omit others, what should I speak of many Bishops of Rome, whose sons, not spurious as now-a-days, but, as Gratian himself witnesses, "lawfully begot in wedlock *;" followed their fathers in the pontifical chair? The reason whereof, that author himself ingenuously rendereth; for that "marriage was every where lawful to the clergy, before the prohibition;" which must needs be late; "and, in the Eastern Church, to this day is allowed †.”

What need we more testimonies, or more examples? Whatever Heliodorus, Bishop of Trica, a man fitter for a wanton love-story than a Church controversy, brought into the Church of Thessalia, Socrates thus flatly writes of those Bishops of his time: "For many of them, in the place and function of Bishop, beget children of their lawful wives§."

This was practised: see what was decreed in that sixth General Council of Constantinople, to this purpose, to the confusion of all repliers. If any Protestant Church in Christendom can make a more peremptory, more full and absolute, more cautelous decree, for the marriage of ecclesiastical persons, let me be condemned as faithless: a place, I grant, miserably handled by our adversaries; and, because they cannot blemish it enough, indignly torn out of the Councils. What dare not impudency do: against all evidences of Greek copies T, against their own Gratian, against pleas of antiquity? This is the readiest way: whom they cannot answer, to burn; what they cannot shift off, to blot out; and, to cut the knot, which they cannot untie.

The Romanists of the next age were somewhat more equal: who, seeing themselves pressed with so flat a decree, confirmed by authority of emperors, as would abide no denial, began to dis tinguish upon the point; limiting this liberty only to the Eastern Church, and granting that all the Clergy of the East might marry, not theirs. So Pope Stephen the second freely confesses: "The tradition," saith he, " of the Eastern Churches is otherwise, than that of the Roman Church: for, their priests, deacons, or subdeacons, are married; but, in this Church, or the Western, no one of the clergy, from the subdeacon to the bishop, hath leave to

* De legitimis conjugiis nati. + Cùm ergo ex sacerdotibus nati in summos Pontifices legantur esse promoti, non sunt intelligendi de fornicatione sed de legitimis connubiis nati; que sacerdotibus ubique ante prohibitionem licita erant, et in Orientali Ecclesiâ usque hodie eis licere probantur. Dist. lvi. Cenoman. The Author of the Ethiopic History.

§ Nam non pauci illorum, dum Episcopatum gerunt, etium liberos ex uxore legitimâ procreant. Socrat. lib. v. cap. 21.

The words of that Council are thus truly translated by Chemnitius: Quoniam in Romana Ecclesiá, loco canonis seu decreti, truditum esse cognovimus, ut ii, qui digni habendi sunt ordinatione diaconi vel presbyteri, profiteantur se deinceps cum uxoribus suis non congressuros; nos, sequentes veterem canonem apostolicæ, sinceræ, exquisite et ordinatæ constitutionis, legitimas sacrorum virorum cohabitationes conjugales etiam ex hodierno die in posterum valere ratas et firmas esse volumus; nullo modo corum cum uxoribus propriis conjunctionem seu copulationem dissolventes. Itaque, si quis dignus inveniatur, &c. is minimè prohibendus est ad hunc gradum ascendere, ideò quòd cum legitimâ uxore cohabitet: nec tempore ordinationis suæ ab eo postuletur, seu cogatur ut abstinere velit aut debeat legitimo congressu cum propriâ uxore.

Citatur à Nilo Thessalonicensi.

marry*." Liberally; but not enough: and, if he yield this, why not more? Shall that be lawful in the East, which in the West is not? Do the Gospels or Laws of equity alter, according to the four corners of the world? Doth God make difference betwixt Greece and England? If it be lawful, why not every where? if unlawful, why is it done any where? So then you see, we differ not from the Church in this; but from the Romish Church. But this Sacred Council doth not only universally approve this practice, with pain of deposition to the gainsayers; but avouches it for a Decree Apostolical. Judge now, whether this one authority be not enough to weigh down a hundred petty conventicles; and many legions, if there had been many, of private contradictions.

Thus, for seven hundred years, you find nothing but open freedom. All the scuffling arose in the eighth age: wherein yet this violent imposition found many and learned adversaries; and durst not be obtruded, at once. Lo, even then Gregory the Third, writing to the Bishops of Bavaria, gives this disjunct charge: "Let none keep a harlot, or a concubine; but either let him live chastely, or marry a wife; whom it shall not be lawful for him to forsake t" according to that rule of Clerks, cited from Isidore‡, and renewed in the Council of Mentz §; to the perpetual shame of our juggling adversaries. Nothing can argue guiltiness, so much, as unjust expurgations. Isidore saith," Let them contain; or let them marry but one :" they cite him, "Let them contain ;" and leave out the rest: somewhat worse than the Devil cited Scripture.

But, I might have spared all this labour of writing, could I persuade whosoever either doubts or denies this, to read over that one Epistle, which Huldericus, Bishop of Auspurge, wrote, learnedly and vehemently, to Pope Nicholas the First, in this subject: which if it do not answer all cavils, and satisfy all readers, and convince all (not wilful) adversaries, let me be cast, in so just a cause. There you shall see, how just, how expedient, how ancient this liberty is; together with the feeble and injurious grounds of forced continency. Read it; and see whether you can desire a better advocate.

After him, so strongly did he plead and so happily, for two hundred years more, this freedom still blessed those parts; yet, not without extreme opposition. Histories are witnesses of the busy and not unlearned combats of those times, in this argument.

*Aliter se Orientalium habet traditio Ecclesiarum; aliter hujus sanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ: nam, eorum sacerdotes, diaconi, aut subdiaconi, matrimonio copulantur; istius autem Ecclesiæ, vel Occidentalium, nullus sacerdotum, à subdiacono usque ad episcopum, licentiam habet conjugium sortiendi, Dist. xxxi. + Nemo scorta, aut concubinam, alat; sed aut castè vivat, aut uxorem ducat; quam repudiare fas non esto. Dist. xxiii. § Anno 813.

Clerici castimoniam inviolati corporis perpetuò conservare studeant; aut certè unius matrimonii vinculo fæderentur, Isid. Reg. Cleric.

¶Whether Huldericus, or, as he is somewhere entitled, Volusianus; I enquire not the matter admits of no doubt. Huldericus Episcopus Augustæ. Anno 860. Eneas Sylv. in suâ Germ. Hedim. Eccl. hist. lib. viii. cap. 2. Fox, in Acts and Monum., hath it fully translated.

But now, when the body of antichristianism began to be complete, and to stand up in his absolute shape, after a thousand years from Christ; this liberty, which before wavered under Nicholas I. now, by the hands of Leo IX. Nicholas II. and that brand of hell, Gregory VII. was utterly ruined, wives debarred, single life urged: "A good turn for whoremasters," saith Aventine, "who now, for one wife, might have six hundred bedfellows*" But, how approved of the better sort, appears, besides that the Churches did ring of him eachwhere for Antichrist, in that, at the Council of Wormst, the French and German Bishops deposed this Gregory; in this name, amongst other quarrels, for "separating man and wife." Violence did this; not reason: neither was God's will here questioned; but, the Pope's wilfulness. What broils hereon ensued, let Aventine witness.

The bickerings of our English Clergy with their Dunstans, about this time, are memorable in our own history; which teach us how late, how repiningly, how unjustly, they stooped under this yoke. I would rather send my reader to Bale and Fox, than abridge their Monuments, to enlarge my own.

I have, I hope, fetched this truth far enough; and deduced it low enough, through many ages, to the midst of the rage of antichristian tyranny. There, left our liberty: there, began their bondage. Our liberty is happily renewed with the Gospel: what God, what his Church hath ever allowed, we do enjoy. Wherein we are not alone: the Greek Church, as large for extent as the Roman, and in some parts of it better for their soundness, do thus: and thus have ever done.

Let Papists and Atheists say what they will; it is safe erring with God, and his purer Church.

EPISTLE IV.

TO MY SISTER MRS. B. BRINSLY.

Of the Sorrow not to be repented of.

It is seldom seen, that a silent grief speeds well: for, either a man must have strong hands of resolution to strangle it in his bosom;

* Aventin. 1. v. Gratum scortatoribus, quibus, pro unâ uxore, sexcentas jam mulierculas inire licebat. + Anno 1076. Maritos ab uxoribus separat. § Ex interdicto sacerdotum conjugio, gravissima seditio gregem Christi perculit: nec unquam talis lues populum Christi afflixit. Avent. 1. v.

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Henric Huntingdon, de Anselmo l. vii. de An. 1100, in Synodo Londinensi : Prohibuit sacerdotibus uxores, ante non prohibitas. Anselm," saith that historian," was the first, that forbad marriage to the clergy of England;" and this was about the year of our Lord 1080;" till then ever free.' Item Fabianus liberos ait fuisse sacerdotes per annos 1080.

"

or else it drives him to some secret mischief: whereas, sorrow revealed, is half remedied; and ever abates in the uttering. Your grief was wisely disclosed; and shall be as strangely answered.

I am glad of your sorrow; and should weep for you, if you did not thus mourn. Your sorrow is, that you cannot enough grieve for your sins. Let me tell you, that the angels themselves sing at this lamentation; neither doth the earth afford any so sweet music, in the ears of God. This heaviness is the way to joy. Worldly sorrow is worthy of pity; because it leadeth to death: but this deserves nothing but envy and gratulation.

If those tears were common, hell would not so enlarge itself. Never sin, repented of, was punished; and never any thus mourned, and repented not. Lo, you have done that, which you grieve you have not done. That good God, whose act is his will, accounts of our will as our deed. If he required sorrow proportionable to the heinousness of our sins, there were no end of mourning now, his mercy regards not so much the measure, as the truth of it; and accounts us to have that, which we complain

to want.

I never knew any truly penitent, which, in the depth of his remorse, was afraid of sorrowing too much; nor any unrepentant, which wished to sorrow more. Yea, let me tell you, that this sorrow is better and more, than that deep heaviness for sin, which you desire. Many have been vexed with an extreme remorse for some sin, from the gripes of a galled conscience; which yet never came where true repentance grew in whom, the conscience plays at once the accuser, witness, judge, tormentor: But, an earnest grief, for the want of grief, was never found in any, but a gracious heart.

You are happy, and complain. Tell me, I beseech you: this sorrow, which you mourn to want, is it a grace of the Spirit of God, or not? If not, why do you sorrow to want it? If it be, oh how happy is it to grieve for want of grace! The God of all Truth and Blessedness hath said, Blessed are those, that hunger and thirst after righteousness; and, with the same breath, Blessed are they, that mourn; for they shall be comforted. You say, you mourn; Christ saith, you are blessed: you say you mourn; Christ saith, you shall be comforted. Either now distrust your Saviour, or else confess your happiness; and, with patience, expect his promised consolation.

What do you fear? you see others stand like strong oaks; unshaken, unremoved: you are but a reed, a feeble plant, tossed and bowed with every wind, and with much agitation bruised: lo, you are in tender and favourable hands, that never brake any, whom their sins bruised; never bruised any, whom temptations have bowed. You are but flax; and your best is not a flame, but an obscure smoke of grace: lo, here his Spirit is as a soft wind, not as cold water; he will kindle, will never quench you.

The sorrow you want, is his gift: take heed, lest, while you vex yourself with dislike of the measure, you grudge at the Giver.

Beggars may not chuse. This portion he hath vouchsafed to give you: if you have any, it is more than he was bound to bestow: yet you say, "What, no more!" as if you took it unkindly, that he is no more liberal. Even these holy discontentments are dangerous. Desire more, so much as you can; but repine not, when you do not attain: desire; but so, as you be free from impatience, free from unthankfulness. Those, that have tried, can say how difficult it is to complain, with due reservation of thanks. Neither know I whether is worse, to long for good things impatiently, or not at all to desire them.

The fault of your sorrow, is rather in your conceit, than in itself. And, if indeed you mourn not enough, stay but God's leisure, and your eyes shall run over with tears. How many do you see sport with their sins; yea, brag of them! how many, that should die for want of pastime, if they might not sin freely, and more freely talk of it! What a Saint are you to these, that can droop under the memory of the frailty of youth; and never think you have spent enow tears!

Yet so I encourage you in what you have, as one that persuades you not to desist from suing for more. It is good to be covetous of grace; and to have our desires herein enlarged, with our receipts. Weep still, and still desire to weep: but, let your tears be as the rain in a sun-thine; comfortable and hopeful: and let not your longing savour of murmur or distrust. These tears are reserved: this hunger shall be satisfied: this sorrow shall be comforted. There is nothing betwixt God and you, but time: prescribe not to his wisdom: hasten not his mercy. His grace is enough for you: his glory shall be more than enough.

EPISTLE V.

TO MR. HUGH CHOLMLEY.

Concerning the Metaphrase of the Psalms.

FEAR not my immoderate studies. I have a body, that controls me enough in these courses: my friends need not. There is nothing, whereof I could sooner surfeit, if I durst neglect my body to satisfy my mind: but, while I affect knowledge, my weakness checks me, and says, "Better a little learning, than no health." I yield, and patiently abide myself debarred of my chosen felicity.

The little I can get, I am no niggard of: neither am I more desirous to gather, than willing to impart. The full handed are commonly most sparing. We vessels, that have any empty room, answer the least knock with a hollow noise: you, that are full, sound not. If we pardon your closeness, you may well bear