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. Many passages already quoted from his letters to friends prove this. The “_misceor feminis_” and the “three wives” on his hands were unbecoming jokes. Kawerau, the historian of Luther, admits the “cynicism of his language”[363] and this unpleasing quality, which is more particularly noticeable when he becomes abusive, is also to be met with even elsewhere, especially in the years which we are now considering. Luther, for instance, jocosely speaks of himself as a virgin, “_virgo_,” and, in a letter to Spalatin where he refers playfully to his own merry and copious tippling at a christening at Schweinitz, he says: “These three virgins were present [Luther, Jonas and his wife], certainly Jonas [as a virgin], for as he has no child we call him the virgin.”[364] Jonas, one of the priests who married, had celebrated his nuptials February 22, 1522. On account of his habit of making fun Luther’s friends called him a “merry boon companion.”