ief in
witchcraft and sorcery. In his _De Captivitate Babylonica Ecclesiae_
(1519) he expresses the view that if, for any cause, husband or wife
are prevented from having sexual intercourse they are justified, the
woman equally with the man, in seeking it elsewhere. He was opposed to
divorce, though he did not forbid it, and recommended that a man
should rather have a plurality of wives than that he should put away
any of them. Luther held strenuously the view that marriage was a
purely external contract for the purpose of sexual satisfaction, and
in no way entered into the spiritual life of the man. On this ground
he sees no objection in the so-called mixed marriages, which were, of
course, frowned upon by the Catholic Church. In his sermon on "Married
Life" he says: "Know therefore that marriage is an outward thing, like
any other worldly business. Just as I may eat, drink, sleep, walk,
ride, buy, speak, and bargain with a heathen, a Jew, a Turk, or a
heretic, so may I also be and remain married to such an one, and I
care not one jot for the fool's laws which forbid it.... A heathen is
just as much man or woman, well and shapely made by God, as St. Peter,
St. Paul, or St. Lucia." Nor did he shrink from applying his views to
particular cases, as is instanced by his correspondence with Philip
von Hessen, whose constitution appears to have required more than one
wife. He here lays down explicitly the doctrine that polygamy and
concubinage are not forbidden to Christians, though, in his advice to
Philip, he adds the _caveat_ that he should keep the matter dark to
the end that offence might not be given. "For," says he, "it matters
not, provided one's conscience is right, what others say." In one of
his sermons on the Pentateuch[5] we find the words: "It is not
forbidden that a man have more than one wife. I would not forbid it
to-day, albeit I would not advise it.... Yet neither would I condemn
it." Other opinions on the nature of the sexual relation were equally
broad; for in one of his writings on monastic celibacy his words
plainly indicate his belief that chastity, no more than other fleshly
mortifications, was to be considered a divine ordinance for all men or
women. In an address to the clergy he says: "A woman not possessed of
high and rare grace can no more abstain from a man than from eating,
drinking, sleeping, or other natural function. Likewise a man cannot
abstain from a woman. The reason is that it is as deep