nation.^ The synod of Ancyra, in 314, permitted deacons to marry even after ordination, in case they had made a condition to that effect beforehand ; otherwise they were to remain sin- gle or lose their office.^ The synod of New Caesarea, which was held at about the same time, certainly before 325, does not go beyond this, decreeing : " If a presbyter (not a deacon) marry (that is, after ordination), he shall be expelled from the clergy ; and if he practise lewdness, or become an adulterer, he shall be utterly thrust out and held to penance." " At the f^^^ general council of Nic^, 325, it was proposed indeed, probably by the Western bishop Hosius,^ to forbid entirely the marriage of priests ; but the motion met with strong opposition, and was rejected. A venerable Egyptian bishop, Paphnutius, though himself a strict ascetic from his youth up, and a confessor who in the last persecution had lost an eye and been crippled in the knee, asserted with impressiveness and success, that too great rigor would injure the church and promote licentiousness, and that marriage and connubial intercourse were honorable " 1 Tim. iii. 2, 12 ; Tit. i. 6. ^ Lib. vi. cap. 17 (ed. Ueltzen, p. 144) : 'Eirio-KOTroj' km. irpefffiuTepov koI StaKovov [thus including the bishop] itirofxev ixovoydfxovs Ka^iaraa^at . . . /j.i] f^{7i/at 5e auToij ixera x^^P'''^°^''-°-^ ayafJLois ovaiv ert firl yd/xov epxecrSai, etc. Can. Apost. can. 17 (p. 241): 'O Sval ydfiois (ru/xTrAoKels juera to pdirriafxa . . . ov Sivarai dvai iiricTKOTroi r) -Kpea^vrepos ^ Sidnuvos ^ 8\a>y rov KaraXoyov rod lepariKOv. Comp. can. 18 and can. 5. ^ Can. 10. Comp. Dr. Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, i. p. 198. * Can. 1. In Harduin, tom. v. p. 1499 ; Hefele, Concilieugesch. i. 211 sq. This canon passed even into the Corpus juris can. c. 9, dist. 28. ^ Hosius of Cordova, vcho was present at the council of Elvira in Spain, in 305, where a similar proposition was made and carried (can. 33). In the opinion above given, Theiner, Gieseler, Robertson, and Hefele agree. § 50. MAEKIAGE AND CELIBACY OF THE CLERGY. 24r. and spotless things.' The council of Gangra in Paphlagonia (according to some, not till the year 380) condemned, among several ascetic extravagances of the bishop Eustathius of Se- baste and his followers, contempt for married priests and re- fusal to take part in their ministry.^ The so-called Apostolic Canons, which, like the Constitutions, arose by a gradual growth in the East, even forbid the clergy, on pain of deposi- tion and excommunication, to put away their wives under the pretext of religion.^ Perhaps this canon likewise was occa- sioned by the hyper-asceticism of Eustathius. Accordingly we not unfrequently find in the Oriental church, so late as the fourth and fifth centuries, not only priests, but even bishops living in wedlock. One example is the father of the celebrated Gregory Nazianzen, who while bishop had two sons, Gregory and the younger