are, in reality, evidences of the lust that
he knew to be raging in very prominent people with whom he had dealings.

Luther's words and teaching would count for little if his personal
conduct and his acts were in open contradiction to his chaste
professions. We would simply have to set him down as a hypocrite. But so
would the people in Luther's own day have done. It is a poor argument to
say that the common people were no match for Luther in an argument. They
were cowed into silence, they were afraid to tell him to his face that
he ought to practise what he preached. Luther's work proved the
spiritual emancipation of the common people, and one of the effects
which mark his reformatory work is the intelligent layman, who forms his
own judgment on what he hears and sees, and speaks out to his superiors.
The Wittenbergers in Luther's day were not a set of ninnies; the
constant association with the professors and students of the university,
the growing fame of their town, which brought many strangers to it,
important civil and religious affairs on which they had to come to a
decision, had made many of them far-sighted and resolute men of affairs.
Luther's home life before and after his marriage was open to public
inspection as few homes are. The most intimate and delicate affairs had
to be arranged before company at times. In a small town-and Wittenberg
was no modern metropolis-what one person knows becomes public
information in a short time. Small communities have no secrets, or at
least find it extremely difficult to have any.

But the lewdness which Luther attacked in his writings on chastity
existed chiefly among persons of wealth and among the nobility. Not a
few of them resented Luther's invectives against their mode of life.
They surely did not lack the courage nor the ability to express
themselves in retaliation against Luther if they had known him to be
immoral himself while preaching morality to others. Last, not least,
there were the Catholic priests and dignitaries of the Roman Church
whose scandalous life Luther exposed. Aside from their disagreement from
Luther in point of doctrine, personal revenge animated not a few of them
with the desire to find a flaw in Luther's conduct. A few reckless
spirits among them insinuated and declared openly that Luther was
immoral, but the animus back of the charge was so well understood at
the time, and the people who were in daily and close touch with Luther
were so full