“After so repeatedly describing himself as the prophet of the Germans,” says A. Hausrath, “he ought not to have had the weakness to seek a compromise between morality and policy, but, like the preacher robed in camels’ hair, he should have boldly told the Hessian Princelet: It is not lawful for you to have her.” Hausrath, in 1904, is voicing the opinion of many earlier Protestant historians when he regrets “that, owing to weariness and pressure from without,” Luther “sanctioned an exception to God’s unconditional command.” “The band of Protestant leaders, once so valiant and upright,” so he says, “had for once been caught sleeping. Evening was approaching and the day was drawing in, and the Lord their God had left them.”[124] _Luther at the Conference of Eisenach. The Landgrave’s Indignation._ An official conference of theologians and Councillors from Hesse and the Electorate of Saxony met at Eisenach at the instance of Philip on July 15, 1540, in order to deliberate on the best means of escaping the legal difficulty and of satisfying Philip’s demand, that the theologians should give him their open support. Luther, too, put in an appearance and lost no time in entering into the debate with his wonted bluster. According to one account, on their first arrival, he bitterly reproached (“_acerbissimis verbis_”)[125] the Hessian theologians. The report of the Landgrave’s sister says, that his long talk with Philip’s Chancellor so affected the latter that the “tears streamed down his cheeks,” particularly when Luther rounded on the Hessian Court officials for their too great inclination towards polygamy.[126] Though these reports of the effect of his strictures and exhortations may be exaggerated, no less than the remark of Jonas, who says, that the “Hessians went home from Eisenach with long faces,”[127] still it is quite likely that Luther made a great impression on many by his behaviour, particularly by the energy with which he now stood up for the cause of monogamy and appealed to the New Testament on its behalf. Without denying the possibility of an exception in certain rare cases, he now insisted very strongly on the general prohibition. The instructions given to the Hessians showed him plainly that the Landgrave was determined not to conceal his bigamy any longer, or to have it branded as mere concubinage; the theologians, so the document declares, would surely never have advised him to have recourse to sinful concubinage. That he was not married to his second wife was a lie, which he would not consent to tell were he to be asked point-blank; his bigamy was really a dispensation “permitted by God, admitted by the learned, and consented to by his wife.” If “hard pressed” he must disclose it. To introduce polygamy generally was of course quite a different matter, and was not to be thought of.[128]--Needless to say, Luther was ready enough to back up this last stipulation, for his own sake as much as for the Landgrave’s.