The great restorer of the true gospel doctrine might have lived in open profligacy as a monk, and it would not probably have been noticed; but to marry was an unpardonable sin. The acknowledged teachers of the priests have laid down such doctrine as the following: Cardinal de Campeggi has taught that “It is a greater sin for a priest to marry than to lead an infamous life.” The Jesuit Coster taught that “Although a priest who indulges the most unnatural appetite commits a great evil, yet he sins still more if he marries;” and Cornelius à Lapide remarks, “For those who have taken the vow of chastity, it is better that they live unchastely than marry.” The men who taught such morals were the opponents of Luther’s marriage. The most influential of his enemies at this time was Erasmus, who, in the beginning did not disallow Luther’s merits, but he was fond of ridicule and sarcasm. He slandered Catharine most infamously, but eight months afterwards he had the magnanimity to retract his false accusations. As we have already learned, Luther had determined to give a particular wedding-festival especially for the sake of his own parents, but we have no account of his having invited the parents of his wife. Every unprejudiced reader will conclude that either her parents were dissatisfied with her flight and marriage, or, what is more probable, they were no longer living. For from the well-known letter of Luther to Koppe, we cannot even with certainty conclude that her parents were living at the time of her escape from the convent. He states that those nine nuns had most earnestly implored their parents and _relatives_ to deliver them from the prison, from which we presume that some of them were orphans, and for this reason applied to their relations. But Luther’s enemies still maintained that the parents of his wife were living, but were of no account, and hence not mentioned at all. It is likely that _poverty_ first moved them to place their daughter in a convent early in life. Luther and some of his cotemporaries bear testimony to the fact that she possessed no property. At one place he thus expresses himself relative to the condition of her property, “As thou gavest her to me, so I return her to thee again, O thou faithful God, who richly aboundest in all things; support, sustain, and teach her as thou hast supported, sustained, and taught me, thou Father of the orphan and judge of the widow.” Even if she had taken property with her into the convent, how could she have secured it in her flight? But when Erasmus writes and says, “Luther has married a wife, a most beautiful daughter of the celebrated family of Bora, but, as is said, without a fortune,” this might also proceed from the dissatisfaction of her relatives with her marriage and her flight from the convent.