He makes a strict application of this in his sermons on Genesis, where he even represents serfdom as a desirable state. Luther delivered these sermons in 1524 and they were printed from notes in 1527. In his preface he declares, that he was “quite willing” they should be published because they express his “sense and mind.” He relates in one passage how Abimelech had bestowed “sheep and oxen, men-servants and maid-servants” on Abraham (xx. 14), and then goes on to say of the people made over: “They too were all personal property like other cattle, so that their owners might sell them as they liked, and it would verily be almost best that this stage of things should be revived, for nobody can control or tame the populace in any other way.” Abraham did not set free the men-servants and maid-servants given him, and yet he was accounted amongst the “pious and holy” and was “a just ruler.” He proceeds: “They [the patriarchs] might easily have abolished it so far as they were concerned, but that would not have been a good thing, for the serfs would have become too proud had they been given so many rights, and would have thought themselves equal to the patriarchs or to their children. Each one must be kept in his place, as God has ordained, sons and daughters, servants, maids, husbands, wives, etc.… If compulsion and the law of the strong arm still ruled (in the case of servants and retainers) as in the past, so that if a man dared to grumble he got a box on the ear—things would fare better; otherwise it is all of no use. If they take wives, these are impertinent people, wild and dissolute, whom no one can use or have anything to do with.”[211] _The Psychological Background. Luther’s Estrangement from Whole Classes of Society_ Both in Luther’s treatment of the peasants of his day and in his whole attitude to different classes of society, we find the traces of a profound and general depression which had seized upon him and which seems to accord ill with the sense of triumph one would have expected in him at the continued progress of his work, and at the apostasy from the Roman Church. Such expressions of dissatisfaction become more frequent as years go by and serve to some extent to explain and excuse his pessimism concerning the different classes. This feeling had its origin, apart from other causes, in the fact that Luther little by little lost touch with whole classes of the people, while to many of the new conditions he remained a stranger. He, who had held in his hands the destiny of so many, was, in fact, becoming to a great extent isolated, particularly since the actual direction of the new Church had been taken out of his hands and vested in the princes or municipal authorities. Not only did the rift which separated him from the peasants subsequent to 1525 become ever more pronounced, but he found hostility and dislike growing between himself and other classes of society.