The few, he declares, who are good and virtuous suffice to prove the Church’s holiness. “Some do more than their part; that they are few in number does not matter. God can help a whole nation for the sake of one man as he did by Naaman, the Syrian (4 Kings v.). In short, one’s life cannot be made a subject of debate.”—On another occasion he replies shrewdly that the mark of holiness was not nearly so safe as other marks, for distinguishing the true Church; for pious works were also practised at times by the heathen.… As regards its importance as a mark, holiness must be subordinated to the true preaching of the Word and to pure doctrine, which in the end will always bring amendment of life; whereas corrupt doctrine poisoned the whole mass, a scandalous life was damaging chiefly to the man who lived it; but corruption of doctrine had penetrated Popery through and through.[1237] “We do not laugh when wickedness is committed amongst us as they [the Papists] do in their Churches; as Solomon says (Prov. ii. 14): ‘Who are glad when they have done evil and rejoice in most wicked things,’ and also seek to defend them by fire and sword.”[1238] We have here an instance of the tactics by which he turns on his adversaries and abuses them. In his anxiety to turn the reproach of his foes against themselves he selects by preference the celibacy of the clergy and the religious vows; nor does he attack merely the blemishes which the Church herself bewailed and countered, but the very institution itself. In his “Von den Conciliis und Kirchen” he exclaims: “The Pope condemns the married life of the bishops and priests, this is plain enough now”; “if a man has been married twice he is declared by the Papists incapable of being promoted to the higher Orders.[1239] But if he has soiled himself by abominable behaviour he is nevertheless tolerated in these offices.”[1240] “Why,” he asks, most unjustly misrepresenting the Catholic view of the sacrament of marriage, “why do they look upon it as the lowest of the sacraments, nay, as an impure thing and a sin in which it is impossible to serve God?”[1241]