In the matter of marriage contracts his experience led him to the following conclusion: “It is clearly expedient that the marriage bond should be tightened rather than loosened”; in this the older Church had been in the right. “You know,” he writes, “what blame (‘_quantum sceleris_’) our party has incurred by its wrong treatment of marriage matters. All the preachers everywhere ought to exert themselves to put an end to these scandals. But many do nothing but publicly calumniate the monks and the authorities in their discourses.” And yet in the same letter he sanctions the re-marriage of a party divorced for some unknown reason, a sanction he had hitherto been unwilling to grant for fear of the example being followed by others; he only stipulates that his sanction is not to be announced publicly; the sermons must, on the contrary, censure the license which is becoming the fashion.[1069] Any open and vigorous opposition to Luther’s views, so detrimental to the inviolability of the marriage tie, was not in accordance with Melanchthon’s nature. He, like Luther, condemned the religious vows on the strange ground that those who took them were desirous of gaining merit in the sight of God. Hence he too came to invite nuns to marry.[1070] And yet, at the same time, he, like Luther, again declared virginity to be a “higher gift,” one which even ranked above marriage (“_virginitas donum est praestantius coniugio_”).[1071] He was gradually drawn more and more into questions concerning the public position of the Lutherans and had to undertake various journeys on this account, because Luther, being under the Ban, was unable to leave the Electorate, and because his violent temper did not suit him for delicate negotiations. Melanchthon erred rather on the side of timidity.