And again. “If a man wished to undergo the acutest sexual suffering, he could adopt no more certain method than to be incontinent with the intention of becoming continent again ‘when he had sown his wild oats.’ The agony of breaking off a habit which so rapidly entwines itself with every fibre of the human frame, is such that it would not be too much to say to any young man commencing a career of vice, ‘You are going a road on which you will never turn back. You had better stop now.’”[20] The Catholic Church has always recognized the tortures so often accompanying a single life, when, exposed to temptation, as every man occasionally is, he endeavors to preserve himself therefrom. “Our strength is like the strength of tow thrown into the fire; it is instantly burned and consumed. Would it not be a miracle if tow cast into the fire did not burn? It would also be a miracle if we exposed ourselves to the occasion and did not fall.” According to St. Bernardine of Sienna, “It is a greater miracle not to fall in the occasion of sin than to raise a dead man to life.” And thus quaintly and forcibly concludes the learned translator of Bishop Liguori, “Do not allow your daughters to be taught letters by a man, though he be a St. Paul or St. Francis of Assissium. _The saints are in heaven._”[21] Moreover, it is a rule of that church that applicants for the priesthood should be fully formed and virile; for although priests are required to observe a moral eunuchism, still they must have the merit of resistance to the thorn in the flesh to obtain the palm of recompense.[22] I do not, of course, imply, nor do I believe, that the great majority of unmarried men are habitually addicted to immoral practices, but that a very great proportion of them, in curbing their desires and keeping themselves under due subjection, undergo a frequent and severe, however unsuspected, martyrdom, is a fact that cannot be gainsaid.