In the course of the Middle Ages it is apparent that the clergy not only continued to possess their share of the general unchastity, but to carry it to excesses by which they alone were distinguished. The amount of legislation bearing on this subject, recorded by Mr. Lea with immense patience and care, is such as to defy memory and imagination, and almost to challenge belief. There can be assuredly no better proof of the very imperfect observation of the canons than this unceasing repetition of them. By the time the Middle Ages had passed away, and the masses had emerged into the comparatively brilliant light of the Renaissance, sacerdotal unchastity had grown into an enormous evil. The disparity between the theory of the priestly character and its actual form had become too flagrant to be endured. Popular protests accordingly became frequent. The abuse of those intimate relations into which the priest is brought with the life of families, and that of the confessional more especially, acquires horrible proportions. And as the question grows more complex on the side of the people, so it grows more complex with regard to the general government of the Church. This government had long since made up its mind, with a firmness destined to be proof against even the most formidable remonstrance, that, whatever might be the manners of its servants, they were to remain inviolably single. The mere ascetic and sentimental reason for celibacy had long been supplanted by good logical and material reasons. A wife and children were speedily found to be incompatible with the exclusive service of the Church. To it alone, if the ambition of its great rulers was to be fulfilled, its ministers were to be devoted. When, with the development of the feudal system, the transmission of property and of functions from father to sons became the groundwork of social order, ecclesiastical benefices were disposed of in the same way as manors and baronies, to the utter prejudice of the temporality of the Church. With this tendency the Church waged a long and violent contest, in which she was finally victorious. But she purchased her victory only at the price of the most scandalous concessions; and by the system of immorality reared upon these concessions she found her hands almost fatally entangled at the Reformation. Dispensation to unchastity in her ministers had become a prominent feature among those various indulgences against which the consciences of the early Reformers rose in wrath. In every country in Europe the people had grown weary of crying out for the abolition of these dispensations, and the reintroduction of marriage. In Germany, accordingly, the marriage of apostate monks and priests was among the foremost measures of the more ardent Reformers. Luther, whose discretion was as great as his courage, was content to wait; but he, too, finally gave in, and united himself with a nun. It is characteristic of the