12

CELIBACY*

manhood, till, at the age of five-and-thirty, religion, and religion alone, tore me away from kindred and country. The intimacy of friendship, the undisguised converse of sacramental confession, opened to me the hearts of many, whose exterior conduct might have deceived a common observer. The coarse frankness of associate dissoluteness, left no secrets among the spiritual slaves, who, unable to separate the laws of God from those of their tyrannical church, trampled both under foot, in riotous despair. Such are the sources of the knowledge I possess: God, sorrow, and remorse, are my witnesses.

A more blameless, ingenuous, religious fct of youths than that in the enjoyment of whose friendship I passed the best years of my life, the world cannot boast of. Eight of us, all nearly of the same age, lived in the closest bond of affection, from sixteen till one-and-twenty; and four, at least, continued in the same intimacy till that of about thirty-five. Of this knot of friends, not one was tainted by the breath of vice till the church had doomed them to a life of celibacy, and turned the best affections of their hearts into crime. It is the very refinement of church cruelty to say they were free when they deprived themselves of their natural rights. Less, indeed, would be the unfeelingness of a parent who, watching a moment of generous excitement, would deprive a son of his birth-right, and doom him, by a voluntary act, to pine away through life in want and misery. A virtuous youth of onc-and-twenty, who is made to believe Christian perfection inseparable from a life of celibacy, will