The Hessian theologians and preachers transferred the responsibility for the abolition of “law and order,” for the increase of the “freedom of the flesh within the Evangel” and for the falling away into a “state like that of Sodom and Gomorrha” to the shoulders of the “magistrates and officials.”[654] The latter, on the other hand, boldly asserted that the preachers themselves were the cause of the evil, since they led a “wicked, scandalous life, drinking, gambling, practising usury and so forth, and were, some of them, guilty of still worse things, brawling, fighting and wrangling with the people in the taverns and behaving improperly with the women.”[655] Bucer himself, Philip’s adviser in ecclesiastical matters, wrote sadly to the Landgrave, in 1539, from Marburg: “The people are becoming demoralised and immorality is gaining the upper hand.” “Where such contempt prevails for God and the authorities there the devil is omnipotent.”[656] 2. At the Centre of the New Faith If we glance at the Saxon Electorate we shall find the deep despondency frequently displayed by Luther concerning the deplorable moral decadence prevailing there only too well justified. The downward trend appeared to have set in in earnest and all hope of remedying affairs seemed lost.[657] The Court and those in authority not only did little to check the evil but, by their example, even tended to promote many disorders. The Elector, Johann Frederick “the Magnanimous” (1532-1547), was addicted to drink. The banquets which he gave to his friends--in which wine was indulged in to an extent unusual even in those days when men were accustomed to heavy drinking--became a byword. Luther himself came to speak strongly on his excessive drinking. “His only faults,” he laments in the Table-Talk, “are his drinking and routing too much with his companions.”[658] “He has all the virtues--but just fancy him swilling like that!”[659] Yet Luther has an excuse ready: “He is a stout man and can stand a deep draught; what he must needs drink would make another man dead drunk.”[660] “Unfortunately not only our Court here but the whole of Germany is plagued with this vice of drunkenness. It is a bad old custom in the German lands which has gone on growing and will continue to grow. Henry, Duke of [Brunswick] Wolfenbüttel calls our Elector a drunkard and very Nabal with whom Abigail could not speak until he had slept off his carouse.”[661] We have the Elector’s own comment on this in a letter to Chancellor Brück: “If the Brunswick fellow writes that we are a drunken Nabal and Benadad, we cannot entirely deny that we sometimes follow the German custom”; at any rate the Brunswicker was not the man to find fault, for he was an even harder drinker.[662]