The healthy sensualism of the Middle Ages found in Luther its classic
interpreter. We have here to do, not so much with the religious
reformer, as with Luther the man. On the human side, Luther's robust
primeval nature stepped forward unadulterated; it compelled him to
express his appetite for love and enjoyment forcibly and without
reserve. His position, as former Roman Catholic clergyman, had opened
his eyes. By personal practice, so to speak, had he learned the
unnaturalness of the life led by the monks and nuns. Hence the warmth
with which he warred against clerical and monastic celibacy. His words
hold good to this day, for all those who believe they may sin against
nature, and imagine they can reconcile with their conceptions of
morality and propriety, governmental and social institutions that
prevent millions from fulfilling their natural mission. Luther says:
"Woman, except as high and rare grace, can dispense with man as little
as she can with food, sleep, water and other natural wants. Conversely,
also, neither can man dispense with woman. The reason is this: It is as
deeply implanted in nature to beget children as to eat and drink.
Therefore did God furnish the body with members, veins, discharges and
all that is needed therefor. He who will resist this, and prevent its
going as Nature wills, what else does he but endeavor to resist Nature's
being Nature, that fire burn, water wet, that man eat, drink or sleep?"
And in his sermon on married life he says: "As little as it is in my
power that I be not a man, just so little is it in your power to be
without a man. For it is not a matter of free will or deliberation, but
a necessary, natural matter that all that is male must have a wife, and
what is female must have a husband." Luther did not speak in this
energetic manner in behalf of married life and the necessity of sexual
intercourse only; he also turns against the idea that marriage and
Church have anything in common. In this he stood squarely on the ground
of the olden days, which considered marriage an act of free will on the
part of those who engaged in it, and that did not concern the Church. On
this head he said: "Know, therefore, that marriage is an outside affair,
as any other earthly act. The same as I am free to eat, drink, sleep,
walk, ride, deal, speak and trade with a heathen, a Jew, a Turk or a
heretic, _likewise am I free to enter into and remain in wedlock with
one of them. Turn your back upon the fool laws that forbid such a
thing_.... A heathen is a man and woman, created by God in perfect form,
as well as St. Peter and St. Paul and St. Luke; be then silent for a
loose and false Christian that you are." Luther, like other Reformers,
pronounced himself against all limitation of marriage, and he was for
also allowing the re-union of divorced couples, against which the Church
was up in arms. He said: "As to the manner in which marriage and divorce
are to be conducted among us, I claim that it should be made the
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