169 There are times, in the history of nations, when the moral necessity
of certain institutions in the Catholic Church makes itself felt,
even by the most incredulous. It is in Germany, as is well known,
that the ecclesiastical law of the celibacy of priests has been most
eagerly attacked; and it is from Germany that has come to us the
most splendid apology for the firmness displayed by the Catholic
Church with regard to this point of discipline. Those priests who
are at this moment so valiantly wrestling against persecution and
braving the loss of income, braving fines, prison, exile, and death
itself—can one suppose they would be equally intrepid, did the
existence of a wife and family depend upon their own?
170 We shall be excused from considering as an universal history of the
Orthodox Church certain little manuals which we have found indicated
in the catalogues of Russian bibliography. Besides, it is not only
of Russia, but of all the countries of the Orthodox communion, that
we ask for one single ecclesiastical history like those of Fleury,
Rohrbacher, Henrion, the Abbé Darras, etc. (to quote French names
only.) The Εκκλησιαστικὴ Ἱστορία (_Ecclesiastical History_) of Mgr.
Mcletius, Metropolitan of Athens (Vienna, 1783‐95), cannot certainly
be compared to them.