eception. The
Faithful gradually forgot their old savage fanaticism, and they have
since contrived, while holding many of their old ideas in theory, to
accommodate themselves in practice to the existing order of things.

The gradual softening and toning down of the original fanaticism in
these two sects are strikingly exemplified in their ideas of marriage.
According to Orthodox doctrine, marriage is a sacrament which can
only be performed by a consecrated priest, and consequently for the
Priestless People the celebration of marriage was an impossibility.
In the first ages of sectarianism a state of celibacy was quite in
accordance with their surroundings. Living in constant fear of their
persecutors, and wandering from one place of refuge to another, the
sufferers for the Faith had little time or inclination to think of
family ties, and readily listened to the monks, who exhorted them to
mortify the lusts of the flesh.

The result, however, proved that celibacy in the creed by no means
ensures chastity in practice. Not only in the villages of the
Dissenters, but even in those religious communities which professed
a more ascetic mode of life, a numerous class of "orphans" began to
appear, who knew not who their parents were; and this ignorance of
blood-relationship naturally led to incestuous connections. Besides
this, the doctrine of celibacy had grave practical inconveniences, for
the peasant requires a housewife to attend to domestic concerns and
to help him in his agricultural occupations. Thus the necessity of
re-establishing family life came to be felt, and the feeling soon found
expression in a doctrinal form both among the Pomortsi and among the
Theodsians. Learned dissertations were written and disseminated in
manuscript copies, violent discussions took place, and at last a great
Council was held in Moscow to discuss the question.* The point at issue
was never unanimously decided, but many accepted the ingenious arguments
in favour of matrimony, and contracted marriages which were, of course,
null and void in the eye of the law and of the Church, but valid in all
other respects.

* I cannot here enter into the details of this remarkable
controversy, but I may say that in studying it I have been
frequently astonished by the dialectical power and logical
subtlety displayed by the disputants, some of them simple
peasants.

This new backsliding of the unstable multitude produced a new