79/107 The praises of an inviolable chastity had been carried to the highest extravagance by some of the first preachers of Christianity among the Saxons: the pleasures of love had been represented as incompatible with Christian perfection; and a total abstinence from all commerce with the sex was deemed such a meritorious penance, as was sufficient to atone for the greatest enormities. The consequence seemed natural, that those, at least, who officiated at the altar, should be clear of this pollution; and when the doctrine of transubstantiation, which was now creeping in,[**] was once fully established, the reverence to the real body of Christ in the eucharist bestowed on this argument an additional force and influence. "Wallingford," p. |