Ordination, which, they say, impresses upon the soul a special character, is a human invention, and what is adduced concerning the laying on of hands from Acts [4: 30] and from I Tim. 4:14 is trivial. That was an external sign by which they marked out those upon whom the gift of tongues was about to descend, or those whom they were going to send out to the ministry of the word. What has this to do with fashioning the character? The episcopate, that is, the ministry of the word, is an office, not a rank. He, therefore, who administers the word is a bishop, and he that does not is no more a bishop than a man is mayor or judge who does not fill the office.
[21]. Marriage?
I am forced to come back to marriage, because a point which I ought especially to have treated was overlooked above. Marriage is an honorable thing, as the Apostle says, Heb. 13: 4. Why, then, do we forbid to some persons a thing even by God’s testimony holy and pious and good: to priests, for instance, monks and nuns, and bishops, that is, ministers of the word?
[1Cf. Zwingli’s Supplicatio ad Hugonem (See Vol. 1, pp. 150ff.) and his]
[Eine freundliche Bitte und Ermahnung am die Eidgenossen (See Vol. 1,]
[pp. 1668.).]
(Those others, whom you are forced to acknowledge as bishops because of their official rank, are, as I have said, not “episcopi” [overseers] but rather “aposcopi” [away-seers].) Those, therefore, who forbid wives to ministers of the word build up with words to tear down with deeds. For there is no need of my saying anything here about the lust of the flesh: we all know by experience how chaste and pure we are! Why, then, do we voluntarily invite a scandal into the church of God, when nowhere are wives forbidden by God’s commandment? We all know that marriage is a respectable thing, as I have said. Why, then, are we unwilling to allow it to the minister of the word? Instead, when we see that any is weak, we prefer to put up with a whoremonger, to the offence and disgrace of the whole church, rather than with a lawful husband. And yet some say that they shudder at any ministering of a priest who has a wife; for they cannot bear, they say, to see a priest celebrating mass in the church or teaching while his wife is listening and praying, though yet they endure without any offence a most shameless whore, sometimes sitting in one of the very front seats. At this point I might properly deal savagely with men not foolish but wicked; for theirs is the voice not of fool- + ishness but of unrighteousness. The mass is not only worthless but an abomination; and 1 am not sure but the profitseeking traffic of masses has deserved that God should have so long endured in His church such foul “spots” (for that is what Peter calls this kind of men [II Pet. 2: 13]). Why, then, does He not wish to see the priest celebrating Mass? Because that which is abominable so pleases us that nothing right either can or ought to please us. We demand masses: therefore let whoremongers celebrate masses, for they are better suited to this abomination than respectable husbands. But let the husband of one wife [ef. I Tim. 3: 2] administer the word in the church of God, lest, when he is teaching that it is not permissible to defraud a brother in his matrimonial affairs, he see present many women whom he has defiled with adultery, and, smitten in conscience, not dare to speak out and to rebuke unfalteringly his own and other men’s sins. But more a little later upon marriage, when we come to vows. Here meanwhile I will suggest that the one and only reason, it seems to me,
why we refuse marriage to our bishops, in spite of the fact that Paul in making a selection above all prefers a married one, I Tim. 3:2 and Tit. 1:6, is that such a countless crowd of priests given over to leisure seems to be a menace if they may take partners to themselves. Some monk will be an heir along with his brother; some nun will put in a claim for an inheritance that has passed to some one else; some priest will be elected into the Council, or perhaps succeed to a magistracy. This is really, in my opinion, the kind of meanness that yet screens itself behind something other than the fact. But why not obviate these evils? Can it not be enacted by law that no priest shall be chosen into the Council? When such a law has been passed, what further danger will threaten? Thus other dangers also could be duly met, and this shameless nastiness be removed from the sight and presence of the faithful. And as far as the exceedingly great number is concerned, why do we not let them die off in peace, and not put any more men into their priesthoods, but convert their goods to the use of the poor, especially since the poor have gone hungry long enough while those others have been filled to bursting? What disturbance, pray, has for some time arisen anywhere in all the kingdoms of the Christian world that was not raised either by the Pope of Rome himself or by those mitred and hatted disciples of his, the bishops and cardinals? Do they not regulate all the policies, fortunes, and decrees of kings? But whence comes this great power? From riches. And whence come the riches? From so many priesthoods, rates, tithes, and other oppressive burdens which would be harder to count up than the stars. Their means, therefore, must be narrowed down to modest limits. But, that no one may be able to complain that the action is taken out of covetousness rather than from zeal for divine things, these persons must be endured until they die off in peace, as I have said. But if some of them with characteristic pertinacity continue to disturb the peace of a commonwealth or kingdom by their power, their wings must be clipped until they no longer can fly so high. But look here, you; what boldness have you? See how ready you are to make a disturbance and to take to plundering! You will crush only those who make a disturbance; those who make no disturb-
ance you will leave free, lest you make a still greater disturbance. Faith must be kept with them as long as they keep it themselves, lest through the habit of breaking faith we degenerate from men into beasts. Look here, you, too; come back and hear the thing out. No private person is to do this, for thus it gradually would come about that anybody could make an attack upon anybody else on some made-up, empty pretence. Leave these things to be arranged by king or magistrate. But look here, you also, you kings and magistrates. Why do you put this money into your own treasury unless forced by extreme need in the defence of your people? Adopt the following rule:
Put the proceeds from the priesthoods, monasteries, rates, revenues, of the departed into the treasury of the poor, not into your own. What these persons have hitherto impiously extorted, give back. Otherwise you would increase more than ever in power and wealth, which render no one humbler or kinder; and so it would eventually come about that on account of your oppressive rule you would make yourselves more hated than you ever would have been if this great increase of wealth. had not come to pass. Fortune is accompanied by envy, and the more the former grows, the more the latter at the same time glows. So much briefly as to abolishing the useless priesthood and converting its goods to the use of the poor. For Christians ought to have no priesthood save Christ’s; and He is an everlasting priest [ Heb. 6: 20], so that none should succeed to His place. But ministers of the word, bishops, that is, watchers who watch over the flock of the Lord, are to be honored with due honor according to Paul’s direction [I Tim. 5:18]. These alone, therefore, we shall have some time in the church of God, when within at most forty years all those that now make us sick and impatient will have moved elsewhere. So long were the Israelites in going from Egypt into the land of Canaan [Exod. 16:35]; in patient endurance we shall not, I hope, be inferior to them.
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