o the devil more than to
God.--I am not ashamed of my counsel, even if it should be published in
all the world; but for the sake of the unpleasantness which would then
follow, I should prefer, if possible, to have kept it secret. Martin
Luther, with his own hand." (21b, 2467; transl. by Preserved Smith.)

About a year later a Hessian preacher, by the name of Johann Lening,
undertook to justify the bigamy of the Landgrave. Under the pseudonym
"Huldricus Neobulus" he published a "Dialogus," that is, "an amicable
conversation between two persons on the question whether it is in
accordance with, or contrary to, divine, natural, imperial, and
spiritual laws for a person to have more than one wife at a time," etc.
The writer defended bigamy. In an unfinished reply to this book Luther
takes strong grounds against him. Referring to the author's argument
that bigamy was sanctioned by Moses, Luther says: "The reference to the
fathers of whom Moses speaks is irrelevant: Moses is dead. Granted,
however, that bigamy was legal in the days of the fathers and Moses,
--which can never be established,--still they had God's word for it that
such a permission was given them. That we have not. And although it was
permitted to the Jews and tolerated by God, while God Himself considered
it wrong, . . . it was merely a dispensation. . . . Now, there is a
great difference between a legal right and a dispensation, or something
that is tolerated or permitted. A legal right is not a dispensation, and
a dispensation is not a legal right; whoever does, obtains, or holds
something by a dispensation does not do, obtain, or hold it by legal
right." Luther then enters upon a brief discussion of the bigamous
relationships which were created by the Mosaic laws, and explains that
legislation as emergency legislation. He says: "What need is there why
we should try to find all sorts of reasons to explain why the fathers
under Moses were permitted to have many wives? God is sovereign; He may
abrogate, alter, mitigate a law as He pleases, for emergency's sake or
not. But it does not behoove us to imitate such instances, much less to
establish them as a right. But this Tulrich [so Luther calls the unknown
author] rashly declares carnal lust free, and wants to put the world
back to where it was before the Flood, when they took them wives, not
like the Jews by God's permission, or because of an emergency or for
charity's sake towards homeless women, as Moses direc