Many of his brother monks had already begun to give an example of marrying when, in the Wartburg (in Sep., 1521), while busy on his work against monastic vows he put to Melanchthon this curious question: “How is it with me? Am I already free and no more a monk? Do you imagine that you can foist a wife on me as I did on you? Is this to be your revenge on me? Do you want to play the Demea [the allusion is to Terence] and give me, Mitio, Sostrata to wife? I shall, however, keep my eyes open and you will not succeed.”[697] Melanchthon was, of course, neither a priest nor a monk. Luther, who was both, was even then undoubtedly breaking away at heart from his vows. This he did on the pretext—untenable though it must have appeared even to him—that his profession had been vitiated by being contrary to the Gospel, because his intention had been to “save his soul and find justification through his vows instead of through faith.” “Such a vow,” he says, “could not possibly be taken in the spirit of the Gospel, or, if it was, it was sheer delusion.” Still, for the time being, he only sanctioned the marriage of other monks who were to be his future helpers; as for himself he was loath to give the Papists “who were jawing” him the pleasure of his marriage. He also denied in a public sermon that it was his intention to marry, though he felt how hard it was not to “end in the flesh.” All these are well-known statements into which we have already gone in detail, which militate against Luther’s later legend of the holy monk, who tormented himself so grievously solely for the highest aims. When, nevertheless, yielding to the force of circumstances, he took as his wife a nun who had herself been eighteen years in the convent, his action and the double sacrilege it involved plunged him into new inward commotion. His statements at that time throw a strange light on the step he had taken. By dint of every effort he seeks to justify the humiliating step both to himself and to others.