Certain preachers of Lutheranism made matters worse by the fanaticism with which they preached the freedom of the Evangel. So compromising was their support, that other of Luther’s followers found fault with it, for instance, the preacher Urbanus Rhegius[540] It was, however, impossible for these more cautious preachers to prevent Luther’s principles being carried to their consequences, in spite of all the care they took to emphasise his reserves and his stricter admonitions. The Protestant Rector, J. Rivius, complained in 1547: “If you are an adulterer or lewdster, preachers say ... only believe and you will be saved. There is no need for you to fear the law, for Christ has fulfilled it and made satisfaction for all men.” “Such words seduce people into a godless life.”[541] E. Sarcerius, the Superintendent of the county of Mansfeld, also bewailed, in a writing of 1555, the growing desecration of the married state: Men took more than one wife; this they did by “fleeing to foreign parts and seeking other wives. Some women do the same. Thus there is no end to the desertions on the part of both husbands and wives.” “In many places horrible adultery and fornication prevail, and these vices have become so common, that people no longer regard them as sinful.” “Thus there is everywhere confusion and scandal both in match-making and in celebrating the marriages, so that holy matrimony is completely dishonoured and trodden under foot.” “Of adultery, lewdness and incest there is no end.”[542]--These complaints were called forth by the state of things in the very county where Luther was born and died. The convert George Wicel, who resided for a considerable time at Mansfeld, had an opportunity of observing the effects of Luther’s matrimonial teaching and of his preaching generally on a population almost entirely Protestant. He writes, in 1536: “It is enough to break a Christian’s heart to see so many false prophets and heretics flourishing in Germany, whose comforting and frivolous teaching fills the land not merely with adulterers but with regular heathen.”[543] In an earlier work he had said: “Oh, you people, what a fine manner of life according to the Gospel have you introduced by your preaching on Grace! Yes, they cry, you would make of Christ a Moses and a taskmaster; they, however, make of Him a procurer and an Epicurean by their sensual life and knavish example.”[544]