August Bebel, in his book “Die Frau und der Sozialismus,” says of Luther: “He put forward, regarding matrimony, views of the most radical character.”[820] “In advocating liberty with regard to marriage, what he had in mind was the civil marriage such as modern German legislation sanctions, together with freedom to trade and to move from place to place.”[821] “In the struggle which it now wages with clericalism social democracy has the fullest right to appeal to Luther, whose position in matrimonial matters was entirely unprejudiced. Luther and the reformers even went further in the marriage question, out of purely utilitarian motives and from a desire to please the rulers concerned, whose powerful support and lasting favour they were desirous of securing and retaining. Landgrave Philip I. of Hesse, who was well disposed towards the reformation,” etc. etc.[822] _Polygamy._ Sanctity of marriage in the Christian mind involves monogamy. The very word polygamy implies a reproach. Luther’s own feelings at the commencement revolted against the conclusions which, as early as 1520, he had felt tempted to draw from the Bible against monogamy, for instance, from the example of the Old Testament Patriarchs, such as Abraham, whom Luther speaks of as “a true, indeed a perfect Christian.”[823] It was not long, however, before he began to incline to the view that the example of Abraham and the Patriarchs did, as a matter of fact, make polygamy permissible to Christians. In September, 1523, in his exposition on Genesis xvi., he said without the slightest hesitation: “We must take his life [Abraham’s] as an example to be followed, provided it be carried out in the like faith”; of course, it was possible to object, that this permission of having several wives had been abrogated by the Gospel; but circumcision and the sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb had also been abrogated, and yet they “are not sins, but quite optional, i.e. neither sinful nor praiseworthy.... The same must hold good of other examples of the Patriarchs, namely, if they had many wives, viz. that this also is optional.”[824] In 1523 he advanced the following: “A man is not absolutely forbidden to have more than one wife; I could not prevent it, but certainly I should not counsel it.” He continues in this passage: “Yet I would not raise the question but only say, that, should it come before the sheriff, it would be right to answer that we do not reject the example of the Patriarchs, as though they were not right in doing what they did, as the Manicheans say.”[825] The sermons where these words occur were published at Wittenberg in 1527 and at once scattered broadcast in several editions. We shall have to tell later how the Landgrave Philip of Hesse expressly cited on his own behalf the passage we have quoted.