Gerson, indeed, who, like most of the ecclesiastics of his time, attributes to the Council of Nicæa the introduction of celibacy, seems inclined to justify the change assumed to have been then made, by alluding to the forged donation of Constantine. That the temporalities of the church could only be entrusted to men cut off from family ties was an axiom in his day, and though he does not himself draw the conclusion, he clearly regarded the supposed accession to the landed estates of the church as a satisfactory explanation of the prohibition of marriage to its ministers in the fourth century.[23] Shortly afterwards, Pius II., one of the most learned of the popes, had no scruple in admitting that the primitive church was administered by a married clergy.[24] Just before the Reformation, Geoffroi Boussard, dean of the faculty of theology of Paris, published, in 1505, a dissertation on priestly continence, in which he positively assumes, as the basis of his argument, that the use of marriage was universally permitted to those in holy orders, from the time of Christ to that of Siricius and Innocent I.; and this may be assumed to be the opinion of the University of Paris, for Boussard formally submitted his tract to that body, and its approbation is to be found in the fact that he was subsequently elevated to its chancellorship, and was sent as its delegate to the Council of Pisa.[25] Even after the Reformation, unexceptionable orthodox authority is found to the same effect. In 1564, Pius IV. admitted it in an epistle to the German princes, and explained it by the necessity of the times.[26] Zaccaria, probably the most learned of Catholic polemics on the subject, endeavors to reconcile his belief in the Apostolic origin of clerical celibacy with the indubitable practice of the primitive church, by suggesting that while the Apostles commanded the observance of the rule by the clergy in general, yet in special cases they discreetly dispensed with it to avoid greater scandals; and that with the gradual increase of these dispensations the clergy came at length to assume the indulgence as a matter of course without asking for special licenses.[27] More logical is the argument brought forward by a priest named Taillard, resisting in 1842 some efforts made to introduce priestly marriage in Prussian Poland. He coolly reasons that if celibacy was not enforced in the primitive church, it ought to have been—“if the celibacy of the priesthood be not from the beginning of Christianity, it ought to have been there, for, as our holy religion comes from God, it should contain in itself all the means possible to elevate the nations to the highest point of liberty and happiness.”[28] II. THE ANTE-NICENE CHURCH.