everyone by his own law; for in the condition of men that have no other law but their own appetites, there can be no general rule of good and evil actions. But in a commonwealth this measure is false: not the appetite of private men, but the law, which is the will and appetite of the state, is the measure. And yet is this doctrine still practiced; and men judge the goodness or wickedness of their own, and of other men’s actions, and of the actions of the commonwealth itself, by their own passions; and no man calleth good or evil, but that which is so in his own eyes, without any regard at all to the public laws; except only monks and friars, that are bound by vow to that simple obedience to their superior, to which every subject ought to think himself bound by the law of Nature to the civil sovereign. And this private measure of good, is a doctrine, not only vain, but also pernicious to the public state.
It is also vain and false philosophy, to say the work of marriage is repugnant to chastity, or continence, and by consequence to make them moral vices; as they do, that pretend chastity, and continence, for the ground of denying marriage to the clergy. For they confess it is no more but a constitution of the Church, that requireth in those holy orders that continually attend the altar and administration of the Eucharist, a continual abstinence from women, under the name of continual chastity, continence, and purity. Therefore they call the lawful use of wives, want of chastity and continence; and so make marriage a sin, or at least a thing so impure and unclean, as to render a man unfit for the altar. If the law were made because the use of wives is incontinence, and contrary to chastity, then all marriage is vice: if because it is a thing too impure and unclean, for a man consecrated to God; much more should other natural, necessary, and daily works which all men do, render men unworthy to be priests, because they are more unclean.
But the secret foundation of this prohibition of marriage of priests is not likely to have been laid so slightly, as upon such errors in moral philosophy; nor yet upon the preference of single life, to the estate of