On the 19th of December, 1539, at Wittenberg, Luther and Melanchthon drew up the famous "Consilium," authorizing the landgrave, Philip of Hesse, to have a plurality of wives. This instrument bears the signatures of Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon, Martin Bucer, Dionysius Melander, John Lening, Antony Corvinus, Adam Kraft, Justus Winther, and Balthasar Raida, nine of the leading Protestant divines of Germany. It is a well-known fact that Luther advised Henry VIII. to adopt polygamy in his case, but by divorcing two wives, and murdering two more, the founder of the English church avoided it. The advocacy of polygamy by the chief Reformers prevented Ferdinand I. from declaring for the Reformation. The German princes, too, generally opposed it; and this opposition, coupled with the fact that the most licentious sects espoused it, finally caused a reaction in favor of monogamy. Protestants, it ill became you to point the finger of scorn at the Mormons of Utah. Yet with characteristic consistency you were demanding the suppression of polygamy in the territories, while at the same time you were endeavoring to have the whole country accept as infallible authority a book which sanctions the pernicious custom. Make the Bible the fundamental law of the land, as you demand, and polygamy will become, in theory at least, a national instead of a local institution. CHAPTER XXX. ADULTERY--OBSCENITY. Adultery. I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it sanctions adultery and prostitution. Adultery is made prominent by the recital of the numerous adulteries of Abraham, Lot, Jacob, Judah, Samson, David, and other Bible saints, and sanctified by the approved adulteries of Abraham and Jacob. Both Abraham and Isaac were willing to sell the virtue of their wives to save themselves from harm. Two instances are recorded of fathers having offered their own daughters to gratify the lust of a sensual mob, and these abominable acts are represented as especially meritorious. Read the nineteenth chapter of Genesis and the nineteenth chapter of Judges; dwell upon the eighth verse of the former and the twenty-fourth verse of the latter; and then, if you can indorse the spirit of these narratives, you are unfit to be the parent of a daughter. The Mosaic law authorizes a father to sell his daughter for a concubine or mistress (euphemistically translated "maid servant"). God's instructions respecting the thirty-two thousand captive Midianite maidens impliedly sanction concubinage and prostitution. These Bible teachings have been the cause of countless outrages against the chastity of woman. John Wesley says: "Almost all the soldiers in the Christian world ... have claimed, more especially in time of war, another kind of liberty: that of borrowing the wives and daughters of the men that fell into their hands" (Wesley's Miscellaneous Works, Vol. III., p. 117). Luther, drawing his morality from the Bible, gave concubinage his indorsement: