convinced himself of the necessity and the scriptural sanction of the married state. In recent years he had urged all his acquaintances to marry--finally even his old adversary, the Archbishop of Mainz. He himself gave two reasons for his decision. For many years he had deprived his father of his son; and it would be like an atonement if he should leave to old Hans a grandson in case of his own death. There was also some defiance in it. His adversaries were saying in triumph that Luther was humiliated, and since all the world now took offense at him, he proposed to give them still greater offense in his good cause. He was of vigorous nature, but there was no trace of coarse sensuality in him, and we may assume that the best reason, which he confessed to no friend, was, after all, the decisive one: Gossip had known for a long time more than he did, but now he also knew that Catherine was dear to him. "I am no passionate lover, but I am fond of her," he wrote to one of his closest friends. And this marriage, performed in opposition to the judgment of his contemporaries, and amid the shouts of scorn of his adversaries, became the bond to which we Germans owe as much as to the years in which he, a priest of the ancient Church, bore arms in behalf of his theology. For henceforth the husband, the father, and the citizen, became the reformer also of the domestic life of his nation; and the very blessing of their earthly life which Protestants and Catholics share alike today is due to the marriage of an excommunicated monk with a runaway nun.