Luther, however, if we may trust one of his most zealous defenders, rendered a great service with regard to sexual intercourse in that “he shook off the pseudo-ascetic spirit of the past.” He demonstrated, so we are told, particularly in what he wrote to Spalatin about the “_actus matrimonialis_”[475]--words which some have regarded as offensive--“that even that act, though represented by his opponents as obscene, to the faithful Christian who ‘receives it with thanksgiving’ (1 Tim. iv. 4), contained nothing to raise a blush or to forbid its mention.” According to the “Roman view” it is perfectly true that “the ‘_actus matrimonialis_’ is sinless only when performed with the object of begetting children, or in order to fulfil the conjugal due.”[476] This, he exclaims, “was forsooth to be the sole motive of conjugal intercourse! And, coupled with this motive, the act even becomes meritorious! Is there any need of confuting so repulsive a notion?... Luther’s view is very different. The natural sexual passion was, according to him, the will and the work of God.” “The effect of the Roman exaltation of celibacy was to make people believe, that the motive [of conjugal intercourse] implanted by God, viz. sexual attraction, must not be yielded to.” This attraction Luther declared to be the one motive on account of which we should “thankfully avail ourselves” of matrimony. “This Luther conveys most clearly in his letter to Spalatin, his intimate friend, shortly after both had wedded.... We know no higher conception of conjugal intercourse.” This description does not do justice to the mediæval Catholic teaching on matrimony, its duties and privileges. This teaching never demanded the suppression of sensual attraction or love. It fully recognised that this had been implanted in human nature by God’s wise and beneficent hand as a stimulus to preserve and multiply the human race, according to His command: “Be fruitful and multiply.” But the Church urged all to see that this impulse was kept pure and worthy by attention to its higher purpose, viz. to the object appointed from above. Instead of becoming its slave the Christian was to ennoble it by allowing the motives of faith to play their part in conjugal intercourse. The Church’s teaching would indeed have been “repulsive” had it demanded the general repression of the sexual instinct and not merely the taming of that unruliness which is the result of original sin, and is really unworthy of man. Had she imposed the obligation to wage an impossible struggle against it as a thing essentially sinful, then her teaching might indeed have been described as “repulsive.”