quired
it of him.

Let us see what those circumstances were. The enforcement of celibacy on
the clergy was, in Luther's opinion, both iniquitous in itself, and
productive of enormous immorality. The impurity of the religious orders
had been the jest of satirists for a hundred years. It had been the
distress and perplexity of pious and serious persons. Luther himself was
impressed with profound pity for the poor men, who were cut off from the
natural companionship which nature had provided for them--who were thus
exposed to temptations which they ought not to have been called upon to
resist.

The dissolution of the religious houses had enormously complicated the
problem. Germany was covered with friendless and homeless men and women
adrift upon the world. They came to Luther to tell them what to do; and
advice was of little service without example.

The world had grown accustomed to immorality in such persons. They might
have lived together in concubinage, and no one would have thought much
about it. Their marriage was regarded with a superstitious terror as a
kind of incest.

Luther, on the other hand, regarded marriage as the natural and healthy
state in which clergy as well as laity were intended to live. Immorality
was hateful to him as a degradation of a sacrament--impious, loathsome,
and dishonoured. Marriage was the condition in which humanity was at
once purest, best, and happiest.

For himself, he had become inured to a single life. He had borne the
injustice of his lot, when the burden had been really heavy. But time
and custom had lightened the load; and had there been nothing at issue
but his own personal happiness, he would not have given further occasion
to the malice of his enemies.

But tens of thousands of poor creatures were looking to him to guide
them--guide them by precept, or guide them by example. He had satisfied
himself that the vow of celibacy had been unlawfully imposed both on him
and them--that, as he would put it, it had been a snare devised by the
devil. He saw that all eyes were fixed on him--that it was no use to
tell others that they might marry, unless he himself led the way, and
married first. And it was characteristic of him that, having resolved to
do the thing, he did it in the way most likely to show the world his
full thought upon the matter.

That this was his motive, there is no kind of doubt whatever.

'We may be able to live unmarried,' he said; 'but in these days we