ous matters. If he had asked his timid friend Melanchthon, he
would most likely have been advised against his marriage. Faint-hearted
Philip was not the man to advise in a matter which at the time required
a heroic faith. Philip, therefore, was duly shocked when he heard about
it. His consternation is now used by Catholics to prove that he regarded
Luther's marriage as a wanton act prompted by lust. This is utterly
unhistorical: Philip was only afraid of the wild talk that would now be
started against all of them. On the right and duty of the clergy to
marry he believed with Luther.

And now a word about the chastity of Rome, particularly that peculiar
brand which was inaugurated by Gregory VII for the Roman clergy and the
religious of both sexes, and riveted upon them by the Council of Trent-
the chastity of the celibate state. That the unnatural principle had
never worked out toward true chastity, that the robbery which it has
perpetrated on men and women had to be compensated for by connivance at,
and open permission of, concubinage, is a matter of current knowledge.
Luther's advice to priests and bishops who had opened their hearts to
him on the state of their chastity to marry their cooks, even if they
had to do it secretly; rather than maintain the other relation to them,
was a good man's effort to meet a grave difficulty as best he could.
This advice is now used to show that Luther was ready to approve any
kind of cohabitation. The very opposite is true: it was because he did
not approve of any kind of sexual intercourse, but because he desired to
obtain some kind of a legal character for that relation, that he gave
the advice to which we have referred.

Before the assembled representatives of the Church and of the German
nation the following statements were read in Article XXIII of the
Augsburg Confession: "There has been common complaint concerning the
examples of priests who were not chaste. For that reason, also, Pope
Pius is reported to have said that there were certain reasons why
marriage was taken away from priests, but that there were far weightier
ones why it ought to be given back; for so Platina writes. Since,
therefore, our priests were desirous to avoid these open scandals, they
married wives, and taught that it was lawful for them to contract
matrimony. First, because Paul says (1 Cor. 7, 2): 'To avoid
fornication, let every man have his own wife.' Also (9): 'It is better
to marry than to burn.' S