Such exhortations of Luther’s, apart from peculiarities of expression, differ from those of earlier writers only in that those authors, relying on the traditional, sacramental conception of the matrimonial union, had an even greater right to eulogise marriage and the blessing of children.
Catholic preachers might quite profitably have made use of the greater part of a wedding discourse delivered by Luther in 1531,[454] though they might have failed to emulate the force and emphasis with which it was uttered. His theme there is “that marriage is to be held in honour”; he quotes Hebr. xiii. 4, “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled”; he continues: “It is true that our flesh is full of evil lusts which entice us to sin, but to these we must not consent; if, however, you hold fast to the Word of God and see to it, that this state is blessed and adorned, this will preserve and comfort you, and make of it a holy state for you.”[455] It was necessary, he continues, not merely to fight against any sensual lusts outside of the marriage bond, but also to cultivate virtue. Conjugal fidelity must be preserved all the more carefully since “Satan is your enemy and your flesh wanton.” “Fornication and adultery are the real stains which defile the marriage bed.” “Married persons are embraced in the Word of God.” This they must take as their guide, otherwise (here Luther’s language ceases to be a pattern) “the bed is soiled, and, practically, they might as well have passed their motions in it.”[456]
Such an emphasising of the religious side of matrimony almost gives the impression, that Luther was following an interior impulse which urged him to counteract the effects of certain other statements of his on marriage. Doubtless he felt the contrast between his worldly view of matrimony and the higher standard of antiquity, though he would certainly have refused to admit that he was behindhand in the struggle against sensuality. In view of the sad moral consequences which were bearing witness against him, he was disposed to welcome an opportunity to give expression to such sentiments as those just described, which tended to justify him both to his listeners and to himself. Nor were such sentiments mere hypocrisy; on the contrary, they have their psychological place as a true component part of his picture. On one occasion Luther bewails the want of attention paid to his excellent doctrines: “The teachers are there, but the doers are nowhere to be found; as with the other points of our doctrine, there are but few who obey or heed us.”[457]
Not infrequently, however, instead of praising the dignity of woman and the purity of married life, Luther speaks in a far from respectful, nay, offensive manner of woman, though without perhaps meaning all that his words would seem to convey. He thereby exposes woman, in her relations with man, to the danger of contempt, and thus forfeits the right of posing as the defender of feminine dignity and of the married state against alleged detractors among the Catholics. His false aspersions on former days thus stand out in a still more unpleasant light.
In a sermon of 1524, where it is true he has some fine words on the indulgent treatment to be meted out to the wife, he says: St. Peter calls woman the “weaker vessel” (1 Peter iii. 7); he “had given faint praise to woman,” for “woman’s body is not strong and her spirit, as a general rule, is even weaker; whether she is wild or mild depends on God’s choice of man’s helpmate. Woman is half a child; whoever takes a wife must look upon himself as the guardian of a child.... She is also a crazy beast. Recognise her weakness. If she does not always follow the straight path, bear with her frailty. A woman will ever remain a woman.... But the married state is nevertheless the best, because God is there with His Word and Work and Cross.”[458]
With those who complain of the sufferings of the mother in pregnancy and childbirth he is very angry, and, in one sermon, goes so far as to say: “Even though they grow weary and wear themselves out with child-bearing, that is of no consequence; let them go on bearing children till they die, that is what they are there for.”[459]
His description of marriage “as an outward, material thing, like any other worldly business,[460] was certainly not calculated to raise its repute;” and in the same passage he proceeds: “Just as I may eat and drink, sleep and walk, ride, talk and do business with a heathen or a Jew, a Turk or a heretic, so also I may contract marriage with him.”[461]
Matrimonial cases had formerly belonged to the ecclesiastical courts, but Luther now drives the parties concerned to the secular judge, telling them that he will give them “a good hog,” i.e. a sound trouncing, for having sought to “involve and entangle him in such matters” which “really concerned the secular authority.”[462] “Marriage questions,” he says, “do not touch the conscience, but come within the province of the secular judge.”[463] Previously, parties whose rights had been infringed were able to seek redress from the ecclesiastical tribunals, the sentences of which were enforced by Canon Law under spiritual penalties, to the advantage of the injured party. Luther, on the other hand, after having secularised marriage, finds himself unable to cope with the flood of people clamouring for justice: “I am tired of them [the matrimonial squabbles] and I have thrown them overboard; let them do as they like in the name of all the devils.”[464] He is also determined to rid the preachers of this business; the injured parties are, he says, to seek for justice and protection “in the latrines of the lawyers”; his own conduct, he hopes, will serve as a model to the preachers, who will now repel all who solicit their help.[465]
The increase in the number of matrimonial misunderstandings and quarrels, the haste with which marriage was entered upon and then dissolved, particularly in the Saxon Electorate and at Wittenberg, was not merely the result of the new Evangelical freedom, as Luther and his friends sadly admitted, but was due above all to the altered views on marriage. In the new preaching on marriage the gratification of the sensual impulse was, as will be shown below, placed too much in the foreground, owing partly to the fanatical reaction against clerical celibacy and religious vows. “To marry is a remedy for fornication”; these words of Luther’s were again and again repeated by himself and others in one form or another, as though they characterised the main object of marriage. Nature was persistently painted as excessively weak in the matter of chastity, and as quite captive under the yoke of passion. People were indeed admonished to curb their passions with the help of Grace, but such means of acquiring God’s Grace as mortification and self-conquest were only too frequently scoffed at as mere holiness-by-works, while as for the means of grace sought by Catholics in the Sacraments, they had simply been “abolished.”