jam nunc sibi omnem per nos induigentise aditum intelligat obseratum : quia ferro necesse est excidantur vul- nera, qute fomentorum non senserint medicinam." The exegesis of Siricius is utterly arbitrary in limiting the demand of holiness (Lev. xx. 7) to the priests and to absti- nence from matrimonial intercourse, and in referring the words of Paul respecting walking in the flesh, Rom. viii. 8, 9, to the married life, as if marriage were thus in- compatible with the idea of holiness. Comp. also the striking remarks of Green- wood, Cathedra Petri, vol. i. p. 265 sq., and Milman, Hist, of Latin Christianity, i. 119 (Amer. ed.), ou Siricius. * Comp. Hefele, ii. 568, and Gieseler, 1. c. (§ 97, note 7). § 50. MAKEIAGE AND CELIBACY OF THE CLERGT. 249 restriction into general effect. In the British and Irish church, isolated as it was from the Roman, the raamage of priests con- tinued to prevail dovra to the Anglo-Saxon period. But with the disappearance of legitimate marriage in the priesthood, the already prevalent vice of the cohabitation of unmarried ecclesiastics with pious widows and virgins '" secretly brought in," ' became more and more common. Tliis spiritual marriage, which had begun as a bold ascetic venture, ended only too often in the flesh, and prostituted tlie honor of the church. The Xicene council of 325 met the abuse in its third canon with this decree: "The great council utterly forbids, and it shall not be allowed either to a bishop, or a priest, or a deacon, or any other clergyman, to have with him a avveiaaKTO'^, unless she be his mother, or sister, or aunt, or some such person, who is beyond all suspicion.'" This canon forms the basis of the whole subsequent legislation of the church de cohoMtatione derimrum et mulierum. It had to be repeatedly renewed and strengthened ; showing plainly that it was often disobeyed. The council of Toledo in Spain, a. d. 527 or 531, ordered in its third canon: "Xo clergyman, from the subdeacon upward, shall live with a female, be she free woman, freed woman, or slave. Only a mother, or a sister, or other near relative shall keep his house. If he have no near relative, his housekeeper must live in a separate house, and shall under no pretext enter his dwelling. "Whosoever acts contrary to this, shall not only be deprived of his spiritual office and have the doors of his church closed, but shall also be excluded from all fellowship of Catholics." The Concilium Agathens^e in South Gaul, a. d. 506, at which thirty -five bishops met, decreed in the tenth and eleventh canons : " A clergyman shall neither visit nor receive into his house females not of his kin ; only with his mother, or sister, or daughter, or niece may he live. Female slaves, also, ' The so-called sorores, or mulieres subintroductoB, or iropdeVoi crvviin-o.KToi. Comp. on the origin of this practice, voL i. § 95. * By