When the sermon on marriage in which the passage occurs was published, Duke George’s representative at the Diet of Nuremberg in 1522 sent his master at Dresden a copy of the booklet, “which the devilish monk,” so he writes, “has unblushingly published, though it has cost him the loss of many followers about here; it would not go well with us poor husbands, should our naughty wives read it. I shall certainly not give my wife one.”[509] Duke George replied with a grim jest which doubtless went the rounds at Nuremberg among those whom the booklet had offended: “As to what you write,” George says, “viz. that you won’t let your wife read the little book on marriage, me thinks you are acting unwisely; in our opinion it contains something which might serve even a jealous husband like you very well; for it says, that if your wife refuses to do your will you have only to turn to the maid. Hence keep a look out for pretty maids. These and similar utterances you may very well hold over your wife.”[510] In 1542 Wicel, in his Postils, speaking of the preachers, says: “The words of St. Paul, ‘Art thou loosed from a wife, seek not a wife,’ 1 Cor. vii. 27, have a very unevangelical sound on the lips of these Evangelists. How then must it be? Quick, take a wife or a husband; whether you be young or old, make haste; should one die, don’t delay to take another. Celebrate the wedding, if it turns out ill, then let the maid come! Divorce this one and take in marriage that one, whether the first be living or dead! For chambering and wantonness shall not be neglected,”--“Since the coming of Christ,” says the same writer elsewhere, “there have never been so many divorces as under Luther’s rule.”[511]