In an exposition often quoted from his course of sermons on Exodus, Luther describes with great exaggeration the violence and irresistibility of the carnal instinct in man, in order to conclude as usual that ecclesiastical celibacy is an abomination. His strange words, which might so readily be misunderstood, call for closer consideration than is usually accorded them; they, too, furnished a pretext for certain far-fetched charges against Luther. With the Sixth Commandment, says Luther, God “scolds, mocks and derides us”; this Commandment shows that the world is full of “adulterers and adulteresses,” all are “whore-mongers”; on account of our lusts and sensuality God accounted us as such and so gave us the Sixth Commandment; to a man of good conduct it would surely be an insult to say: “My good fellow, see you keep your plighted troth!” God, however, wished to show us “what we really are.” “Though we may not be so openly before the world [i.e. adulterers and whore-mongers], yet we are so at heart, and, had we opportunity, time and occasion, we should all commit adultery. It is implanted in all men, and no one is exempt ... we brought it with us from our mother’s womb.”[765] Luther does not here wish to represent adultery as a universal and almost inevitable vice, or to minimise its sinfulness. Here, as so often elsewhere, he perceives he has gone too far and thereupon proceeds to explain his real meaning. “I do not say that we are so in very deed, but that such is our inclination, and it is the heart that God searches.” Luther is quite willing to admit: “There are certainly many who do not commit fornication, but lead quite a good life”; “this is due either to God’s grace, or to fear of Master Hans” (the hangman). “Our reason tells us that fornication, adultery and other sins are wrong.... All these laws are decreed by nature itself,” just like the Commandment not to commit murder.[766] “But we are so mad,” “when once our passions are aroused, that we forget everything.” Hence we cannot but believe, that “even though our monks vowed chastity twice over,” they were adulterers in God’s sight. The conclusion he arrives at is: “Such being our nature, God forbids no one to take a wife.” The whole passage is only another instance of Luther’s desire to magnify the consequences of original sin without making due allowance for the remedies provided by Christianity, the sacraments in particular. It is also in keeping with his usual method of clothing his attack on Catholicism in the most bitter and repulsive language, a method which gradually became a second nature to him.