It is said there, p. 263: "In Catholicism the observance of a perpetual chastity, for the sake of God, appears as in itself the highest merit of man. The view that the observance of continual chastity as an end in itself sanctifies and exalts the man is, as every instructed Catholic is convinced, deeply rooted in Christianity, both as regards its spirit and its express precepts. The decrees of the Council of Trent have abolished all possible doubt on this point. ... It must at any rate be confessed by every unprejudiced person, not only that the doctrine expressed by "Der Katholik" is really Catholic, but also that the proofs adduced may be quite irrefutable for a Catholic reason, because they are drawn so directly from the ecclesiastical view, taken by the Church, of life and its destiny." It is further said in the same work, p. 270: "Although both Paul calls the forbidding to marry a false doctrine, and the still Judaistic author of the Epistle to the Hebrews enjoins that marriage shall be held in honour by all, and the bed kept undefiled (Heb. xiii 4), yet the main tendency of these two sacred writers is not on that account to be mistaken. Virginity is for both the perfect state, marriage only a make-shift for the weak, and only as such to be held inviolable. The highest effort, on the other hand, was directed to complete, material putting off of self. The self must turn and refrain from all that tends only to its own pleasure, and that only temporarily." Lastly, p. 288: "We agree with the Abbé Zaccaria, who asserts that celibacy (not the law of celibacy) is before everything to be deduced from the teaching of Christ and the Apostle Paul."
What is opposed to this specially Christian view is everywhere and always merely the Old Testament, with its (
Greek characters). This appears with peculiar distinctness from that important third book of the Stromata of Clement, where, arguing against the encratistic heretics mentioned above, he constantly opposes to them only Judaism, with its optimistic history of creation, with which
