Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/403

1548.] which the Lords passed; but on going to the House of Commons, the lamb, he said, was in the wolf's custody. It was pulled in pieces in committee, and came to nothing. A third found a similar fate; and the Protector had succeeded only in raising hopes which he was obliged to disappoint. The Clergy Marriage Act of the last year was brought up again, and discussed in many forms. First, it was proposed that laymen having wives might be made priests; then, more vaguely, that married men might be priests. At last it was determined simply to repeal all positive laws enforcing celibacy, as having given occasion to vice. But, in abolishing the prohibition to marry, the Parliament continued to signify their moral disapproval. 'It were better for the estimation of priests,' they said, 'and therefore much to be wished, that they would willingly endeavour themselves to a perpetual chastity.'

'Fasting' was next dealt with in a similar spirit of compromise. In the light of the new doctrine the distinctions between days and meats no longer existed. There was, and could be, nothing definitely pleasing to God in eating meat or abstaining from it on one day more than another; yet, 'due and godly abstinence from flesh was a means to virtue, to subdue men's bodies to the soul and spirit.' 'By eating of fish much flesh was saved to the country,' and the fishing-trade was the nursery of English seamen. For these causes, true each in itself, however grotesque they appear in combination,