It should first be noted that, throughout the work in question, “Von den Jüden und jren Lügen,” Luther is busy with the Jews. He compares the happiness which, according to him, they await from their Messias, with that enjoyed by the pig.[950] In his cynical manner he concludes that the happiness of the pig was even to be preferred to Jewish happiness, for the Jews would not be “secure for a single hour” in the material happiness they expected, for they would be oppressed by the “horrible burden and plague of all men, viz. death,” seeing that they merely look for a temporal king as their Messias, who shall procure them riches, mirth and pleasure. Thereupon we get one of his customary outbursts: “Were God to promise me no other Messias than him for whom the Jews hope, I would very much rather be a pig than a man.” Yet he proceeds: I, however, as a Christian, have a better Messias, “so that I have no reason to fear death, being assured of life everlasting,” etc. Well might our “heart jump for joy and be intoxicated with mirth.” “We give thanks to the Father of all Mercy.... It was in such joy as this that the Apostles sang and gave praise in prison amidst all their misery, and even young maidens, like Agatha and Lucy,” etc. But the wretched Jews refused to acknowledge this Messias. How then can one infer from Luther’s words, “I am convinced that anyone who has felt the anguish and terror of death,” etc., that he represented the lot of the hog as the supreme goal of Christians in general and himself in particular? It is true that he magnifies the fear of death which naturally must oppress the heart of every believer, and for the moment makes no account of the consolation of Christian hope, but all this is merely with the object of forcing home more strongly to the Jews whom he is addressing, what he had just said: “Of what use would all this be to me [viz. the earthly happiness which you look for] if I could not be sure of it even for one hour? If the horrible burden and plague of all men, death, still presses on me, from which I am not secure for one instant, but go in fear of it, of hell and the wrath of God, and tremble and shiver at the prospect, and this without any hope of its coming to an end, but continuing for all eternity?” His closing words apply to unbelievers who are ignorant of the salvation which is in Christ: “It is better to be a live pig than a man who is everlastingly dying.” The passage therefore does not convey the meaning which has been read into it. We may here glance at some charges in which his moral character is involved, brought against certain doctrines and sayings of Luther. _Did Luther allow as valid Marriage between Brother and Sister?_