Revolutions never go backwards. Perhaps the Lateran fathers who adopted the canon scarcely realized its logical conclusions. If they did, they at all events shrank from expressing them openly and fully, and left the faithful to draw their own deductions as to the causes and consequences of such an order. Time, however, familiarized the minds of ardent churchmen with the idea, and it was seen that if the practice thus enjoined was correct, doctrine must be made to suit and to justify it. To this end an additional stimulus was afforded by the failure of the canon to accomplish the results anticipated from it, for the custom of sacerdotal marriage was as yet by no means eradicated. The council of Liége, held by Innocent II. in 1131, referred to in a preceding section, and those of Clermont and Rheims, over which he likewise presided, in 1130 and 1131, show how little had been accomplished, and how generally the clergy of Europe disregarded the restrictions nominally imposed upon them, and the punishments which they so easily escaped.[781] In the canons of these councils not only is it observable that the question of marriage and celibacy is treated as though it were a matter now for the first time brought to the attention of the clergy, but also that the innovation attempted by the council of Lateran, only seven or eight years previous, is prudently suppressed and passed over without even an allusion. * * * * * Innocent, restored to Rome and to power, was bolder than when wandering through Europe, soliciting the aid of the faithful. Surrounded by a thousand bishops at the second great council of Lateran, in 1139, he no longer dreaded to offend the susceptibilities of the clergy, and he proceeded to justify the canon of 1123 by creating a doctrine to suit the practice there enjoined. After repeating the canons of Clermont and Rheims, he unhesitatingly pronounced that a union contracted in opposition to the rule of the church was not a marriage.[782] He draws no argument from the conflict of sacraments assumed to be incompatible; a simple vow dissolves the sacrament of marriage, and renders it null and void—or rather destroys its efficacy and anticipates its existence.