The book was to answer in the affirmative the question contained in the sub-title: “Whether it be in accordance with or contrary to the Divine, natural, Imperial and ecclesiastical law, to have simultaneously more than one wife.” The author, however, clothed his affirmation in so pedantic and involved a form as to make it unintelligible to the uninitiate so that Philip could say that, “it would be a temptation to nobody to follow his example,” and that it tended rather to dissuade from bigamy than to induce people to commit it.[164] This work was very distasteful to the Courts of Saxony, and Luther soon made up his mind to write against it. He wrote on Jan. 10, 1542, to Justus Menius, who had sent him a reply of his own, intended for the press: “Your book will go to the printers, but mine is already waiting publication; your turn will come next.... How this man disgusts me with the insipid, foolish and worthless arguments he excretes.” To this Pandora all the Hessian gods must have contributed. “Bucer smells bad enough already on account of the Ratisbon dealings.... May Christ keep us well disposed towards Him and steadfast in His Holy Word. Amen.”[165] From what Luther says he was not incensed at the Dialogue of Neobulus so much on account of its favouring polygamy itself, but because, not content with allowing bigamy conditionally, and before the tribunal of conscience, it sought also to erect it into a public law. When, however, both Elector and Landgrave[166] begged him to refrain from publishing his reply, he agreed and stopped the printers, though only after a part of it had already left the press.[167] His opinion concerning the permissibility of bigamy in certain cases he never changed in spite of the opposition it met with. But, in Luther’s life, hardly an instance can be cited of his having shrunk back when attacked. Rarely if ever did his defiance--which some admire--prove more momentous than on this occasion. An upright man is not unwilling to allow that he may have been mistaken in a given instance, and, when better informed, to retract. Luther, too, might well have appealed to the shortness of the time allowed him for the consideration of the counsel he had given at Wittenberg. Without a doubt his hand had been forced. Further, it might have been alleged in excuse for his act, that misapprehension of the Bible story of the patriarchs had dragged him to consequences which he had not foreseen. It would have been necessary for him to revise completely his Old-Testament exegesis on this point, and to free it from the influence of his disregard of ecclesiastical tradition and the existing limitations on matrimony. In place of this, consideration for the exalted rank of his petitioners induced him to yield to the plausible reasons brought forward by a smooth-tongued agent and to remain silent.