"Your _freedom of affection_ also has been destroyed; your heart is stifled and perverted. And how! Shall I hesitate freely to speak out, because I may subject myself to suspicion--because I expose myself to the attacks of vulgar-minded men? Ah, no! the principle at stake is too important, too elevated, and too holy,--it involves nature's highest ordinance, the holiest concerns of man; from it depends the happiness, the welfare of many millions--the virtue, honour, and freedom of the nations; so that I would gladly expose myself on its account to suspicion and attack! It is _love, marriage, and the family-tie_; you have been robbed of these--robbed of them by the Rule of Celibacy! It is by this Rule that your affections are stifled and perverted. Yes, your hearts are corrupted by the ordinance of celibacy, which has no warrant in the Gospel, but has been introduced with blood and murder by an imperious Pope. This ordinance deprives you of your claim to the possession of a virtuous wife, whose love would render you far happier and more honourable; it robs you of the joys, the hopes, the love, which bless the family-tie; it impoverishes and desolates your breast. This ordinance demoralizes your natural instinct, hands you over to those outcasts of womankind, through whom so many fall into the deepest mire of immorality, and become an offence and mockery to their congregations. This ordinance deprives you of the stamp of open manliness, and makes you _hypocrites!_ "If the free exercise of reason, will, and affection, has been taken from you, what have you left worth living for? Can your luxurious tables compensate for the loss of life's best blessings? Compensate! when your feast is interrupted by the needy, wretched cries of thousands of your starving fellow-creatures! or are your revels only seasoned by the groans of your necessitous brethren? You call yourselves the fathers, the teachers of the people; arise, then! conduct yourselves as such, and help to extricate them from their depth of spiritual and physical misery! Such is your duty, before all others!--'But how can we help them,' do you ask? Not by the bit of silver, thrown to the poor man with an ostentatious air, which, in most instances, but tends to lower or extinguish self-respect; and is besides, but as a drop in the great furnace. Stand forth against the despotism of Rome! abolish superstition, that barrier to free agency, and the free practice of virtue! break down the dishonouring restrictions upon conscience and religion! contend for the spiritual and physical wellbeing of your fellow-citizens, and you will aid the people and yourselves! Yes, arise and burst the chains of cowardice and shame; tear asunder the web of dissimulation which Rome has woven round you, and become unfettered, honest priests--true teachers of the German people! You will become everything! for at present you are _nothing_; become _men!_ attain at