This letter was printed in 1526. Dr. Johann Rühel received instructions to sound the Archbishop as to his views and seek to influence him. It is a well-known fact that Albert was more a temporal potentate than an ecclesiastical dignitary, and that his reputation was by no means spotless.
Archbishop Albert was said to have asked Dr. Rühel, or some other person, why Luther himself did not take a wife, seeing that he “was inciting everyone else to do so.” Should he say this again, Luther writes to Rühel, “You are to reply that I have always feared I was not fit for it. But if my marriage would be a help to his Electoral Grace, I should very soon be ready to prance along in front of him as an example to his Electoral Grace; before quitting this life I purpose in any case to enter into matrimony, which I regard as enjoined by God, even should it be nothing more than an espousal, or Joseph’s marriage.”[360] In what way he feared “not to be fit” for marriage, or why he contemplated nothing more than a “Joseph’s marriage,” Luther does not say. A “Joseph’s marriage” was certainly not calculated to satisfy the demands which he himself was accustomed to make, in the name of nature, concerning conjugal life. At any rate, his observation to Dr. Rühel is very remarkable, as being one of the first indications of his approaching marriage.
At this critical period of his life the free and unrestrained tone which he had employed at an earlier date becomes unpleasantly conspicuous in his letters, writings and sermons. It is sufficient to read the passages in his justification of the nuns’ flight where he treats of his pet conviction, viz. the need of marrying, in words which, from very shame, are not usually repeated. “Scandal, or no scandal,” he concludes his dissertation on the nuns who had forsaken their vow of chastity, “necessity breaks even iron and gives no scandal!”[361] He had already once before complained that our ears have become “much purer than the mouth of the Holy Ghost,” referring to certain sexual matters spoken of very openly in the Old Testament.[362] He himself, however, paid little heed to such conventions, and, especially when jesting, delighted to set them at defiance.