_April _18. 1833
Church of Rome — Celibacy of the Clergy
In my judgment, Protestants lose a great deal of time in a false attack when they labour to convict the Romanists of false doctrines. Destroy the Papacy, and help the priests to wives, and I am much mistaken if the doctrinal errors, such as there really are, would not very soon pass away. They might remain in terminis, but they would lose their sting and body, and lapse back into figures of rhetoric and warm devotion, from which they, most of them,—such as transubstantiation, and prayers for the dead and to saints,—originally sprang. But, so long as the Bishop of Rome remains Pope, and has an army of Mamelukes all over the world, we shall do very little by fulminating against mere doctrinal errors. In the Milanese, and elsewhere in the north of Italy, I am told there is a powerful feeling abroad against the Papacy. That district seems to be something in the state of England in the reign of our Henry the Eighth.
How deep a wound to morals and social purity has that accursed article of the celibacy of the clergy been! Even the best and most enlightened men in Romanist countries attach a notion of impurity to the marriage of a clergyman. And can such a feeling be without its effect on the estimation of the wedded life in general? Impossible! and the morals of both sexes in Spain, Italy, France, &c. prove it abundantly.
The Papal church has had three phases,—anti-Caesarean, extra-national, anti-Christian.