This publication, which has been extolled as “the happy inauguration of a healthy love of the things of sense,”[377] was preceded in 1522 by his sermon “On conjugal life.” We must here call to mind a similar earlier publication of 1519. When, on the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany, he preached a “sermon on the conjugal state,” this was at once printed by some stranger from notes made. Many who read it were filled with astonishment at the unheard-of freedom of speech displayed. Very soon Luther’s friend, Christoph Scheurl, expressed his disapproval of the tone: “I have read many of Martin’s writings which appeal to his best friends more than his sermon on Matrimony, because they are pure, humble, modest, measured and earnest, as beseems a theologian.”[378] After this letter Luther declared that the sermon had been printed without his knowledge, and with many stupid mistakes, so that he was “ashamed” of it,[379] and that same year (1519) he had it reprinted in an amended form.[380] It has been proved, however, that another sermon, which had been taken down and printed at the same time as the first sermon on Matrimony, was reported quite correctly;[381] hence the first printed edition of the sermon on Matrimony was probably not as inexact as Luther afterwards pretended.
When we come to examine the teaching contained in the sermon “On conjugal life” of the year 1522, we find, regarding the marriage tie, notwithstanding the protestation that marriage was to be considered sacred and indissoluble, such sentences as the following: “If the wife is stubborn and refuses to fulfil her duty as a wife,” “it is time for the husband to say: If you refuse, another will comply; if the wife will not, then let the maid come.” She is however to be reprimanded first “before the Church,” and only then is the above counsel to be put in force: “If she refuses, dismiss her, seek an Esther and let Vasthi go.... The secular power must here either coerce the woman or make away with her. Where this is not done, the husband must act as though his wife had been carried off by brigands, or killed, and look out for another.” In short, the marriage is dissolved, and the husband is at liberty to marry the maid.[382] We must not, however, overlook the fact that in other passages of the same sermon Luther gives some quite excellent advice, whether against evil desires, or for the exercise of patience in matrimony.
