In the same letter Luther also refers to the reproach he had at first dreaded, viz. of degrading himself by his marriage. He scoffs at this: “I have become so low and despicable by this marriage,” he says jokingly, “that I hope the angels will laugh and all the devils weep. The world and its ‘wise ones’ do not yet recognise the pious and holy work of God and in me they regard it as something impious and devilish. Hence it pleases me greatly that, by my marriage, the opinion of those who continue to persevere in their ignorance of divine things is brought in question and condemned. Farewell, and pray for me.”[475] Such utterances were directed also against many of the friends of the Evangel. Hieronymus Schurf, the lawyer, and otherwise Luther’s confidant, had been one of those opposed to his marriage. He had said: “If this Monk takes a wife all the world and the devil himself will laugh, and Luther will undo the whole of his previous work.”[476] Melanchthon, too, expressed his deep displeasure at the marriage in the remarkable Greek letter already once referred to (p. 145) addressed to his friend Joachim Camerarius, and dated June 16, 1525. The true wording of this Greek letter, which Camerarius saw fit to modify, as is proved by the original in the Chigi Library in Rome, with his “corrections” in red pencil, only became known in 1876.[477] He revised it completely for his edition of Melanchthon’s letters because he feared to make the severe censure it contained public; thus the letter was formerly only known in the altered shape in which it was also published in 1834 in the “_Corpus Reformatorum_,” which begins with Melanchthon’s letters. A similar fate has befallen several other letters of Melanchthon in the Camerarius editions, and consequently also in the “_Corpus_.”