ABSTRACT
The issue of clerical celibacy had much to offer Protestant writers in their efforts to identify the historical Antichrist in terms of morality and doctrine. The argument that the forbidding of marriage was the mark of the Antichrist was conducted at two levels. First, the imposition of clerical celibacy was related to the prophecies of Antichrist as the man of sin, and the agent of doctrinal innovation. Second, the historical enforcement of celibacy on the priesthood offered reformers the opportunity to use clerical celibacy to assess the extent of the influence of Antichrist in the church. The common association of moral degeneracy with theological error in Reformation polemic made clerical celibacy a vital element in the identification of the false church. The argument that the clergy generally failed to keep to their vows, and the equation of such behaviour with that expected members of the false church, underpinned the suggestion that the institutional church was the congregation of the Antichrist.
