His belief in metempsychosis meant that the Catharan was a vegetarian. He abjured cheese, milk and eggs as well as meat; but flesh was worst of all, because all flesh is of the Devil.[33] But the human spirit was regarded with the greatest sanctity. The effusion of blood was always wrong, the circumstances made no difference—it was always murder. The parricide was no wickeder than the soldier in battle or the judge condemning the criminal to death.[34] No human being was ever justified in preventing his fellow men from following out their own course to salvation. It may seem at first sight curious that the Catharan, so strongly condemning the taking of another’s life, should in certain cases condone and even encourage suicide. The explanation is, however, simple enough. Once granted the conception of the radically evil nature of the world and, secondly, of entrance into the Catharan fold as ensuring immediate entrance into glory without further probation after death, it was legitimate for a believer, conscious of his having accomplished the object of his earthly penance and made his salvation secure, to hasten the time of his departure into heaven. Hence the initiated would sometimes escape the sufferings of illness, or the recent convert flee from the temptation of the desire for the temporal things he had renounced, by suicide. Such Catharan suicide was known as the Endura. Yet more remarkable than the sanction of suicide was another consequence of the Manichæan creed—the condemnation of matrimony.[35] The connection of thought was logical and the conclusion perhaps logically inevitable. If it be accepted that the carnal body is the invention of the Devil and the propagation of the species his device for prolonging his power, the love of the sexes original sin, then it is clear that marriage is service of Satan. So the Cathari enjoined the severest possible chastity.[36] As usual they found evidence of their belief in the Bible. But for them there was no difference between one form of sexual intercourse and another. Adultery, even incest, was not one whit more iniquitous than marriage. On the whole they were rather less evil. For adultery was only temporary and produced a feeling of shame; whereas marriage was permanent, a lasting living in sin, contemplated without shame. The bearing of children was regarded with horror. Every birth was a new triumph for the evil one; a pregnant woman was possessed of the Devil, and if she died pregnant, could not at once be saved.[37] Catharan beliefs inevitably involved the denunciation of Catholicism.[38] It was the Catholic that was the heretic; the wearer of the pontifical tiara could not possibly be even a disciple of Him who wore a crown of thorns, was indeed antichrist. The clergy from the highest to the lowest were pharisees; the sacraments—infant baptism, the sacrificial mass—were declared to have no warrant in Scripture, to be mere figments of the imagination.[39]