eny or else publish the whole
confession. Such things belong not to the secular courts, nor are they
to be published. God has here His own judgment, and must counsel souls
in matters where no worldly law nor wisdom can help. My preceptor in the
cloister, a fine old man, had many such affairs, and once had to say of
them with a sigh: 'Alas, alas! such things are so perplexed and
desperate that no wisdom, law, nor reason can avail; one must commend
them to divine goodness.' So instructed, I have, accordingly, in this
case also acted agreeably to divine goodness.--But had I known that the
Landgrave had long before satisfied his desires, and could well satisfy
them with others, as I have now just learned that he did with her of
Eschwege, truly no angel would have induced me to give such counsel. I
gave it only in consideration of his unavoidable necessity and weakness,
and to put his conscience out of peril, as Bucer represented the case to
me. Much less would I ever have advised that there should be a public
marriage, to which (though he told me nothing of this) a young princess
and young countess should come, which is truly not to be borne and is
insufferable to the whole empire. But I understood and hoped, as long as
he had to go the common way with sin and shame and weakness of the
flesh, that he would take some honorable maiden or other in secret
marriage, even if the relation did not have a legal look before the
world. My concession was on account of the great need of his
conscience--such as happened to other great lords. In like manner I
advised certain priests in the Catholic lands of Duke George and the
bishops secretly to marry their cooks.--This was my confessional counsel
about which I would much rather have kept silence, but it has been wrung
from me, and I could do nothing but speak. But the men of Dresden speak
as though I had taught the same for thirteen years, and yet they give us
to understand what a friendly heart they have to us, and what great
desire for love and unity, just as if there were no scandal or sin in
their lives, which are ten times worse before God than anything I ever
advised. But the world must always smugly rail at the moat in its
neighbor's eye, and forget the beam in its own eye. If I must defend all
I have said or done in former years, especially at the beginning, I must
beg the Pope to do the same, for if they defend their former acts (let
alone their present ones), they would belong t