husbands and fathers, and a close student of theological literature will soon learn to recognise the notes of artificiality and lack of sympathy which mark the work of unmarried moralists. Lord Bacon must perhaps be reckoned an advocate for clerical celibacy on grounds of practical utility, but he admits frankly enough the indurating tendency of the single life. He says:
"Certainly, wife and children are a kind of discipline of humanity; and single men, though they be many times more charitable because their means are less exhaust, yet, on the other side, they are more cruel and hard-hearted (good to make severe inquisitors), because their tenderness is not so oft called upon."[1]
Clerical marriage has disadvantages from the point of view of ecclesiastical discipline which are sufficiently obvious, but there can be no doubt that few influences can be more degrading on the whole conception of domestic life in any community, than that the official exponents of religion should be exiled by reason of their sacred profession
- ↑ See "Essays," ed. Reynolds, p. 52.
