Brooding over the permission given, the scholar sought earnestly for grounds of excuse for the bigamy. “I looked well into it beforehand,” he writes in 1543, “I also told the Doctor [Luther] to weigh well whether he could be mixed up in the affair. There are, however, circumstances of which the women [their Ducal opponents at Meissen] are not aware, and understand not. The man [the Landgrave] has many strange ideas on the Deity. He also confided to me things which I have told no one but Dr. Martin; on account of all this we have had no small trouble.”[153] We must not press the contradiction this presents to Melanchthon’s other statement concerning the Prince’s hypocrisy. Melanchthon’s earlier letter dated Sep. 1, 1540, Camerarius ventured to publish in the collection of his friend’s letters only with omissions and additions which altered the meaning. Until 1904 this letter, like Melanchthon’s other letter on Luther’s marriage (vol. ii., p. 176), was only known in the amended form. W. Rockwell has now published the following suppressed passages from the original in the Chigiana at Rome, according to the manuscript prepared by Nicholas Müller for the new edition of Melanchthon’s correspondence. Here Melanchthon speaks out plainly without being conscious of any “Secret of Confession,” and sees little objection to the complete publication by the Wittenbergers of their advice. “I blame no one in this matter except the man who deceived us with a simulated piety (‘_simulatione pietatis fefellit_’). Nor did he adhere to our trusty counsel [to keep the matter secret]. He swore that the remedy was necessary. Therefore, that the universal biblical precept [concerning the unity of marriage]: ‘They shall be two in one flesh’ might be preserved, we counselled him, secretly, and without giving scandal to others, to make use of the remedy in case of necessity. I will not be judge of his conscience, for he still sticks to his assertion; but the scandal he might well have avoided had he chosen. Either [what follows is in Greek] love got the upper hand, or here is the beginning and foretaste of that insanity which runs in the family. Luther blamed him severely and he thereupon promised to keep silence. But ... [Melanchthon has crossed out the next sentence: As time goes on he changes his views] whatever he may do in the matter, we are free to publish our decision (‘_edere sententiam nostram_’); for in it too we vindicated the law. He himself told me, that formerly he had thought otherwise, but certain people had convinced him that the thing was quite indifferent. He has unlearned men about him who have written him long dissertations, and who are not a little angry with me because I blamed them to their teeth. But in the beginning we were ignorant of their prejudices.” He goes on to speak of Philip as “depraved by an Alcibiadean nature (‘_Alcibiadea natura perditus_’),”