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Against Vigilantius

2.

Shameful to relate, there are bishops who are said to be associated with him in his wickedness—if at least they are to be called bishops—who ordain no deacons but such as have been previously married; who credit no celibate with chastity—nay, rather, who show P. 418 clearly what measure of holiness of life they can claim by indulging in evil suspicions of all men, and, unless the candidates for ordination appear before them with pregnant wives, and infants wailing in the arms of their mothers, will not administer to them Christ’s ordinance. What are the Churches of the East to do? What is to become of the Egyptian Churches and those belonging to the Apostolic Seat, which accept for the ministry only men who are virgins, or those who practice continency, or, if married, abandon their conjugal rights? Such is the teaching of Dormitantius, who throws the reins upon the neck of lust, and by his encouragement doubles the natural heat of the flesh, which in youth is mostly at boiling point, or rather slakes it by intercourse with women; so that there is nothing to separate us from swine, nothing wherein we differ from the brute creation, or from horses, respecting which it is written: ¹“They were toward women like raging horses; everyone neighed after his neighbour’s wife.” This is that which the Holy Spirit says by the mouth of David: ²“Be ye not like horse and mule which have no understanding.” And again respecting Dormitantius and his friends: ³“Bind the jaws of them who draw not near unto thee with bit and bridle.”

Edition Hide
Contra Vigilantium liber unus

2.

Caelibatus Clericorum.—Proh nefas! episcopos sui sceleris dicitur habere consortes: si tamen episcopi nominandi sunt, qui non ordinant diaconos, nisi prius uxores duxerint: nulli caelibi credentes pudicitiam, immo ostendentes quam sancte vivant, qui male de omnibus suspicantur: et nisi praegnantes uxores viderint clericorum, infantesque de ulnis matrum vagientes, Christi sacramenta non tribuant. Quid facient Orientis Ecclesiae? quid Aegypti et Sedis Apostolicae, quae aut virgines Clericos accipiunt, aut continentes: aut si uxores habuerint, mariti esse desistunt? Hoc docuit Dormitantius, libidini frena permittens, et naturalem carnis ardorem, qui in adolescentia plerumque fervescit, suis [Al. hortationibus] hortatibus duplicans; immo extinguens coitu feminarum: ut nihil sit quo distemus a porcis, quo differamus a brutis animantibus, quo ab equis, de quibus scriptum est: Equi insanientes in feminas facti sunt mihi: unusquisque in uxorem proximi sui hinniebat. (Jerem. V, 8). Hoc est quod loquitur per David Spiritus sanctus: Nolite fieri sicut equus et mulus, quibus non est intellectus (Psal. XXXI, 9). Et rursum de Dormitantio et sociis ejus: In chamo et freno maxillas eorum constringe, qui non approximant ad te.