Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

DECAY
OF
Similarly, under the Danish scourge, vocations declined,
and discipline was relaxed before the noon-
day brightness had passed away. Still, it was only
at a later time that the worst effect of mingled
terror and weakness asserted itself. " For three
hundred years after St. Augustine's time," says
Lingard, " there is no mention of a married priest
in any document."1 Perfect continence had been
the inheritance bequeathed to God's priests among
the Angles by the great Pope St. Gregory, and
preserved intact among them, as far as earthen
vessels can keep the heavenly treasure, up to the
end of Alfred's reign. Under his successors there
were instances of married priests, and this falling
off is traceable to the dearth produced by the Danish
invasions. The ranks of the rnass-priest had become
so thinned in consequence of Danish violence that the
derici not in Holy Orders, who were always allowed
to marry, had under pressure of circumstances been,
in many cases, raised to the priesthood without the
precautions which would have been required by full
discipline. In their ordinary course, the canons
prescribed that men so ordained should part from
their wives, and keep the solemn promises of their
priesthood. Whether from emergency or negligence
this engagement may have been overlooked; it certainly
was disregarded, so that by degrees instances
of non-continence became common enough to defy
the laws. Those who had married before orders
1 History of the Anglo-Saxon Church, vol. ii. p. 252.