The reader already knows that, according to Luther, a woman who has no children by her husband, may, with the latter’s consent, quietly dissolve the marriage and cohabit with another, for instance, with her brother-in-law; this, however, was to be secret, because the children were to be regarded as her first husband’s. Should he refuse his consent, says Luther, “rather than suffer her to burn or have recourse to adultery, I would advise her to marry another and flee to some place where she is unknown. What other advice can be given to one who is in constant danger from carnal lusts?”[506] Duke George of Saxony, referring to a similar passage in Luther’s work “On Conjugal Life” (1522),[507] said in a letter to Luther which was immediately printed: “When was it ever heard of that wives should be taken from their husbands and given to other men, as we now find it stated in your Evangel? Has adultery ever been more common than since you wrote: If a woman has no children by her husband, then let her go to another and bear children whom her husband must provide for as though he were the father? This is the fruit of the precious Evangel which you dragged forth out of the gutter. You were quite right when you said you found it in the gutter; what we want to know is, why you didn’t leave it there.”[508] What Luther had said concerning the refusal to render the conjugal due: “If the wife refuse, then let the maid come,” attracted more attention than he probably anticipated, both among his own adherents and among his foes. It is true, as already pointed out, that the context does not justify illicit relations outside marriage (see vol. iii., p. 252 f.), but the words as they stand, to say nothing of the unlikelihood of any real marriage with the maid, and, finally, the significance which may have clung to a coarse saying of the populace possibly alluded to by Luther, all favoured those who chose to make the tempting phrase a pretext for such extra-matrimonial relations.