Every impartial observer could have seen that the preference given to virginity by the Catholic Church, her defence of the manner of life of those whom God had called to the cloister, and her guardianship of the celibacy of the priesthood, handed down from the earliest ages, did not in the least imply any undervaluing of marriage on her part--unless indeed, as Joseph Mausbach remarks, he was prepared to admit that, “because one thing is better, its opposite must needs be bad.” “Who thinks,” continues the same writer, that “preference for gold involves contempt for silver, or preference for the rose a depreciation of all other flowers? But these very comparisons are to be met with even amongst the ancient Fathers.... Why should the Church’s praise of virginity be always misconstrued as a reproach against matrimony? All this is mere thoughtlessness, when it is not blind prejudice, for the Church did everything to prevent any misunderstanding of her praise of virginity, and certainly taught and defended the sanctity of marriage with all her power.”[474] Luther’s judgment was not due so much to mere thoughtlessness as to his burning hatred of the Papacy; this we see from the vulgar abuse which, whenever he comes to speak of marriage and celibacy, he showers on the Pope, the supreme champion of the Evangelical Counsels and of the priestly ideal of life; on the other hand, it was also to some extent due to his deeply rooted and instinctive aversion for everything whereby zealous Christians do violence to nature out of love for God, from the motive of penance and from a desire to obtain merit. _The Natural Impulse and the Honour of Marriage._ Ecclesiastical writers before Luther’s day speak frequently and plainly enough of the impulse of nature, but, as a rule, only in order to recommend its control, to point out the means of combating excesses, and to insist on the Sacrament which sanctifies conjugal intercourse and brings down the blessings we require if the earthly and eternal purpose of marriage is to be fulfilled.