The writer in the very first lines takes pains to convince this religious, that “he had been created by God for the married state and was forced and impelled by Him thereto.” The religious vow was worthless, because it required what was impossible, since “chastity is as little within our power as the working of miracles”; man was utterly unable to resist his natural attraction to woman; “whoever wishes to remain single let him put away his human name and fashion himself into an angel or a spirit, for to a man God does not give this grace.” Elsewhere Luther, nevertheless, admits that some few by the help of God were able to live unmarried and chaste. In view of the sublime figures to be found in the history of the Church, and which it was impossible to impeach, he declares that “it is rightly said of the holy virgins that they lived an angelical and not a human life, and that by the grace of the Almighty they lived indeed in the flesh yet not according to it.” He proceeds to heap up imaginary objections against the vow of chastity, saying that whoever makes such a vow is building “upon works and not solely on the grace of God”; trusting to “works and the law” and denying “Christ and the faith.” In the case of Reissenbusch, the only obstacle lay in his “bashfulness and diffidence.” “Therefore there is all the more need to keep you up to it, to exhort, drive and urge you and so render you bold. Now, my dear Sir, I ask of you, why delay and think about it so long, etc.? It is so, must be and ever shall be so! Pocket your scruples and be a man cheerfully. Your body demands and needs it. God wills it and forces you to it. How are you to set that aside?” He points out to the wavering monk the “noble and excellent example which he will give”; he will become the “cloak of marriage” to many others. “Did not Christ become the covering of our shame?... Among the raving madmen [the Papists], it is accounted a shameful thing, and though they do not make any difficulty about fornication they nevertheless scoff at the married state, the work and Word of God. If it is a shameful thing to take a wife, then why are we not ashamed to eat and drink, since both are equally necessary and God wills both?” Thus he attributes to the Catholics, at least in his rhetorical outbursts, the view that it was a “shameful thing to take a wife,” and accuses them of scoffing at the “married state,” and of “not objecting to fornication.” He did not see that if anyone strives to observe chastity in accordance with the Counsel of Christ without breaking his word and perjuring himself, this constancy is far from being a disgrace, but that the disgrace falls rather on him who endeavours to entice the monk to forsake his vows.