Was Cyprian libelling his own brethren and sisters when he described how depraved, how licentious, how sodom-like was the conduct of the so-called "virgins" of his time? Cyprian lived in the third century after Christ, and he was speaking of the same phase of Christianity which provoked the immortal passage in Gibbon. Carrying their brazen hypocrisy to unheard of lengths, the monks and the nuns occupied the same beds, and yet unblushingly vowed that they had passed through this fiery furnace without the smell of fire on their garments! If I were to quote the Latin in which Cyprian exposes these shameless harlots and libertines, the great and good U. S. Government would perhaps _again_ prosecute me for telling the truth on Roman Catholicism. _Popery is the one thing that you must not tell the truth about, unless you are prepared to withstand boycott, abuse, persecution and threats against your property and life!_ (The curious are cited to "Elliott on Romanism," Vol. II., p. 408, and to Cyprian to Pompanius, Book II., p. 181.) So well understood was it that young men and young women needed each other, sexually, that both in the Latin and in the Greek there was a distinctive name given to these "holy virgins." The "soul marriage" of the ancient church was as much like the affinity doings of the present day, as Solomon's carryings on were like those of the Sultan of Turkey. To the testimony of Cyprian may be added that of Chrysostom, who bewailed the utter licentiousness of the "virgins." Since Bishop Udalric in the year 606 wrote of the skulls of the six thousand infants found in draining off some fish ponds at the command of Gregory the Great, the slaughter of the babes has gone steadily on. "When Pope Gregory ascertained that _the infants thus killed were born from the concealed fornications of and adulteries of the priests_, he recalled his decree, extolling the apostolic command. It is better to marry than to burn." (Elliott II., p. 409.) Yet, when we are told the same story by Father Chiniquy, Dr. Justin Fulton, ex-priest William Hogan, ex-priest Fresenborg, ex-priest Manuel Ferrando, ex-nun Margaret Shepherd, ex-nun Maria Monk, ex-priest Blanco White, ex-priest Seguin, and by such submissive Catholics as Erasmus, Rabelais, Campanella and scores of other unimpeachable witnesses, we are more inclined to listen to the impudent denials of the lecherous priests than to the evidence of _those who escape AND TELL_! The denial made by the unmarried priests is at variance with their looks, is at variance with admitted facts, is at variance with what we ourselves know of the overwhelming strength of our carnal desires: yet the impudent denial is _so_ brazen, _so_ persistent, and _so_ threatening, that we either accept it, or enter the plea of _nolle contendere_.