Of the unlooked-for effects produced among Luther’s preachers by the above saying, Sebastian Flasch, an ex-Lutheran preacher and native of Mansfeld, complained in 1576: “Although the preachers are married, yet they are so ill-content with their better halves, that, appealing to Luther’s advice, they frequently, in order to gratify their insatiable concupiscence, seduce their maids, and, what is even more shameful, do not blush to misconduct themselves with other men’s wives or to exchange wives among themselves.” He appeals to his long experience of Lutheranism and relates that such a “_commutatio uxorum_” had been proposed to him by a preacher of high standing.[512]--Much earlier than this, in 1532, Johann Mensing, the Dominican, wrote sadly, that the state of matrimony was dreadfully disgraced by the new preachers; “for they give a man two wives, a woman two husbands, allow the man to use the maid should the wife not prove compliant, and the wife to take another husband should her own prove impotent.” “When they feel disposed or moved to what is sin and shameful, they say the Holy Spirit urges them. Is not that a fine tale that all the world is telling about Melchior Myritsch of Magdeburg, of Jacob Probst of Bremen and of others in the Saxon land. What certain mothers have discovered concerning their daughters and maids, who listened to such preaching, it is useless to relate.”[513]--The name of the ex-Augustinian, Melchior Myritsch, or Meirisch, recalls the coarseness of the advice given by Luther, on Feb. 10, 1525, to the latter’s new spouse. (See vol. ii., p. 144.) _Respect for the Female Sex in Luther’s Conversations._ Had Luther, as the legend he set on foot would make us believe, really raised the dignity of woman and the married state to a higher level, we might naturally expect, that, when he has to speak of matters sexual or otherwise repugnant to modesty, he would at least be reticent and dignified in his language. We should expect to find him surrounded at Wittenberg by a certain nobility of thought, a higher, purer atmosphere, a nobler general tone, in some degree of harmony with his extraordinary claims. Instead we are confronted with something very different. Luther’s whole mode of speech, his conversations and ethical trend, are characterised by traits which even the most indulgent of later writers found it difficult to excuse, and which, particularly his want of delicacy towards women, must necessarily prove offensive to all.[514]