That such a theoretical movement on the subject of marriage should produce some awkward practical fruits, was not surprising. So fierce and naked an appeal to original rights was likely to set men speculating very freely and largely as to what their rights were. It was not surprising if, amid the clearance of established ideas, a certain Elector Philip of Hesse began to imagine that there would be no great harm in having two wives. The appeal had been made to the old dispensation; and under the old dispensation a plurality of wives was allowed. Philip described his case as a very strong one, and supplicated earnestly.

Now it is obvious that as soon as a demand like this was, in an actual individual case, urged upon Luther, he had no solid ground on which to oppose it. Luther could not, upon his principles, say at once that it was wrong for a Christian to marry a second wife; nor did he ever. He was asked the question more than once, and always pointedly refused to say that such an act was absolutely wrong. Thus he writes to an inquirer: 'To your first question, whether a man may have more than one woman to wife, my answer is this. • Unbelievers may do what they please; but Christian freedom ' is to be regulated according to love, so that every thing should ' be determined with a view to our neighbour's good, where no ' necessity or sin against faith or conscience prevents us. Now ' however every one seeks that freedom, which will serve and 'profit himself, without regard to his neighbour's benefit or 'edification; although S. Paul says, "All things are lawful to

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me, but all things are not expedient: Only use not your ' liberty for an occasion to the flesh." - Again, though the 'ancients had many wives, Christians are not to act after such

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an example, because there is no necessity, nor edification, nor ' special word of God, commanding this; and such great scandal ' and trouble might come from it. Therefore do not esteem the 'Christian as more free, unless there be some command of God ' with regard to such freedom.' In this answer he discourages the liberty of taking more than one wife, as fraught with scandal, and not serving to edification: he advises persons to do with one wife, but he cannot absolutely command them. As the Elector said: 'Lutherus scribit, se bigamiam non suadere.' He dissuades as a counsellor and friend, he cannot and wishes not to do more. On the demand of the Landgrave then reaching them, this was the line which Luther's and Melancthon's answer adopted. They dissuaded him from the contemplated step, and told him of the scandal which would arise from it if known; but admitted at the same time that if he insisted upon it, they could not forbid it. The letter, which bears the names of Luther, Melanchthon, Bucer, Melander, Corvinus, Adam, Leningus, Winteferte, from beginning to end alternates from one to the other of these two points, and finally grants the permission required.1

1. With regard to the question, of which Master Bucer spoke with us, firstly, this is our opinion. Your grace knows and understands this yourself, that it is a very different thing to make a general law, and in a particular case to use a dispensation, out of weighty reasons, and yet according to Divine permission; for against God no dispensation has force. Now we cannot advise that it be openly introduced, and thus made a law, that each be allowed to have more than one wife. But should any thing of this get into print, your grace may conceive that this would be understood and adopted as a general law, whence much scandal and trouble would ensue. Therefore this is by no means to be adopted; and we pray your grace to consider how grievous it would be, if it were charged upon any one that he had introduced this law in the German nation, whence endless trouble in all marriages might be feared. As to what may be said against this, that what is right before God should be altogether allowed, this is true in a measure. If God has commanded it, or it is a necessary thing, it is true; but if it is not commanded nor necessary, other circumstances should be taken into account. Thus with regard to this question: God instituted marriage so that it was to be the union of two persons alone, and not of more.

'In certain cases, however, a dispensation may be used, -as if a person taken captive in a foreign land should marry there, and on gaining his freedom should bring his wife with him, or if long-continued sickness should supply a cause, as has been held at times with regard to lepers, if in such cases a man takes another wife with the counsel of his pastor, not to introduce a law, but as a matter of necessity, such a man we could not condemn. Since, then, it is one thing to introduce a law, and another to use a dispensation, we humbly entreat your grace to consider, first, that care should in every way be taken that this matter be not brought publicly before the world as a law which everybody may follow. Next, since it is to be no law, but merely a dispensation, let your grace also consider the scandal, namely, that the enemies of the gospel would cry out that we are like the Anabaptists, who take several wives at once, and that the Evangelicals seek the liberty of taking as many wives as they please, according to the practice in Turkey. Again, what princes do, gets abroad much further than what is done by private persons. Again, if private persons hear of such an example in their lords, they desire that the like should be allowed to them; as we see how easily a practice spreads.

Therefore let your grace, in consideration of all these causes, the offence, the other cares and labours, and the weakness of body, weigh this matter well. Be also pleased to consider that God has given your grace fair young princes and princesses with this consort, and be content with her, as many others must have patience under their marriage, to avoid offence. For that we should excite or urge your grace to an offensive innovation, is far from our mind. For your country and others might reproach us on account thereof, which would be intolerable to us, because we are commanded in God's word to regulate marriage and all human matters according to their first divine institution, and, so far as possible, to keep them therein, and to avert whatever may offend any one. Such, too, is now the way of the world, that people like to throw all the blame upon the preachers, if any thing unpleasant falls out; and men's hearts, among high and low, are unsteady; and all sorts of things are to be feared. But if your grace do not quit your unchaste life, for that you write that this is not possible, we would rather that your grace stood in better case before God, and lived with a good conscience, for your grace's happiness and the good of your country and people. If, however, your grace should at length resolve to take another wife, we think that this should be kept secret, as was said above of the dispensation; namely, that your grace, and the lady, with some confidential persons, should know your grace's mind and conscience through confession. From this no particular rumour or scandal would arise; for it is not unusual for princes to have concubines; and

- Now this act of Luther's does not appear one which we need hesitate to judge. It is the act of deliberately permitting a Christian to have two wives, and thus deliberately violating the Christian code with respect to marriage. Marriage is by original institution monogamy: departure from that institution was allowed afterward, in condescension to man's weakness and hardness of heart; but Christianity reverted to it, and enforced it as an inviolable law; and of this law Luther deliberately sanctioned the transgression. Nevertheless, as Archdeacon Hare has attempted an apology for this act of Luther's, it is due to him to see what he has to say. Archdeacon Hare then sums up his apology thus: 'Such is the amount of 'Luther's sin, or rather error, -for sin I dare not call it,' in this affair, in which the voice of the world, ever ready 'to believe evil of great and good men, has so severely con'demned him, without investigation of the facts, although 'the motives imputed to him are wholly repugnant to those ' which governed his conduct through life. He did not com'promise any professed principles, as the reviewer accuses 'him of doing: he did not inculcate polygamy, as the pam'phleteer charges him with doing. But inasmuch as he could 'ne discover any direct, absolute prohibition of polygamy ' in the New Testament, while it was practised by the Patriarchs, ' and recognised in the law, he did not deem himself warranted ' in condemning it absolutely, when there appeared in special cases to be a strong necessity, either with a view to some great ' national object, or for the relief of a troubled conscience. Here ' it behoves us to bear in mind, on the one hand, what import'ance Luther attached, as all his writings witness, to this high ' ministerial office of relieving troubled consciences: and it may ' mitigate our condemnation of his error, which after all was ' an error on the right side, its purpose being to substitute a ' hallowed union for unhallowed license.' - Pp. 857, 858.

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Now this defence holds good against one particular inference

although all the people would not know what the circumstances were, the intelligent would be able to guess them, and would be better pleased with such a quiet way of life, than with adultery and other wild and licentious courses. Nor are we to heed everything that people say, provided our consciences stand right. Thus far, and this we deem right. For that which is permitted concerning marriage in the law of Moses, is not forbidden in the Gospel.'-Hare's Mission of the Comforter, pp. 831-834.

1 However the question of casuistry, with respect to the two wives of a heathen, brought with him at his conversion into the Christian Church may be disposed of, the decision will not at all affect the inviolability of the law of monogamy with respect to Christians. The act of bigamy, there, is a heathen act, and, therefore, however ex post facto dealt with, no precedent whatever for the act in a Christian.

which has been drawn from Luther's act. Sir William Hamilton appears to us hard upon Luther in charging him with a wish to promulgate polygamy, and in regarding this act as only the sanction, in a particular instance, of a practice which he desired at heart to establish generally. The whole language of the answer to the Landgrave shows that the liberty allowed him, was only allowed as a dispensation, and that the permitting authority was reluctant even to grant that: it indicated men feeling themselves under a difficulty: afraid of their own reputation if they gave leave, afraid of the Landgrave if they refused it; unable to reject polygamy as wrong in principle, and yet shrinking from it when threatened with the fact. But whatever becomes of Sir W. Hamilton's view, the act still remains to be excused-the act of allowing a particular person to have two wives; and what does the apologist say here? The substance of his apology is little more than a statement of the offence: Luther, he says, could not prohibit polygamy in an individual instance, because he did not think the Gospel absolutely prohibited polygamy. But the fact that Luther did not think so, is Luther's offence. Nobody could blame him for acting upon a view, if he had a true view: the charge is against his view to begin with: the view he held that polygamy was consistent with Christianity. The subordinate defences, suggested to take off from the edge of the offence, and 'mitigate our condemnation,' are hardly more fortunate. 'Luther,' the apologist tells us, 'attached great importance to the high ministerial office of relieving troubled consciences,' and in this particular case acted on that motive. Now it is difficult to see how the conscience of the Landgrave of Hesse can, except by a very lax use of the term, be put under the class of what are called ' troubled consciences.' The Landgrave said, 'If you do not 'allow me to have another wife, I shall only take the same ' liberty under another shape; and therefore you may as well 'allow me.' The matter of trouble to the Landgrave's conscience was not a past sin of which he wanted to repent, but a future sin which he intended to commit, if he had not a particular license given him. If to give such license for such a cause be called 'giving relief to a troubled conscience,' we see no reason why a license to break the whole of the ten commandments may not be given to persons upon their certifying beforehand that they intend to break them, whether they have the license or no; and why such general license should be refused the title of a general relief to troubled consciences. The validity of such an excuse entirely depends on the previous question, whether an act of polygamy is absolutely wrong or no in a Christian? If not in itself wrong, however inexpedient the general adoption might be, it is subject-matter of dispensation, and a considerate spiritual guide may allow it in a particular case, in order to preserve a person from committing what is wrong. But if an act of polygamy is absolutely wrong in a Christian, to allow it in order to save him from doing what is wrong, is as bad reasoning as it is loose morality. A man who cannot submit to the law of monogamy, may or may not be a tolerable heathen, but he is not a Christian, and has no right to belong to the Church of Christ upon earth. And to accommodate Christian law to him, in order that it may be said that he does not break Christian law, is to injure Christianity, and to do him no good. Indeed, the reason why the permission was given, which in Archdeacon Hare's opinion so mitigates the offence of giving it, appears to us strongly to aggravate it. For what was the ground of the permission? Was it one of those eccentric and unlooked-for reasons which occur once or twice in the world in the course of a century? No: the Landgrave urged no reason but what a thousand men in every city of Christendom might urge the next day. His one and sole reason was that his present wife was a disagreeable person, and that he wanted another: he gave no grounds but that of simple desire on his part, that the indulgence should be allowed. Differing from Sir William Hamilton, in the view that Luther wished to promote general polygamy, we must yet say that the fact of the permission of a particular case of it, on such a ground as this, was a precedent for the widest spread of it; for what was there to stop the operation of a precedent which admitted simple strong desire as a sufficient reason? Whatever Luther wished, his act was a generally unsettling one, and capable of bearing the largest and most systematic results in the way of innovation.

Nor can we admit, again, a comparison, which the apologist institutes between the conduct of a divine who sanctions an act of polygamy, and that of one who connives at licentiousness; a comparison which he decides in favour of the former. However much to blame Luther was, -says Archdeacon Hare, he was not so much to blame as Bossuet; for Bossuet connived at much greater immorality in Louis XIV. than Luther sanctioned in Philip of Hesse. But there is a fallacy in this reasoning; for, were it granted that Louis XIV.'s immorality was worse than that of Philip of Hesse's, and that Bossuet connived at it, the act of sanctioning is a different genus of offence altogether from the act of connivance; and to sanction a less crime is much worse than to connive at a greater. If a person commits a wrong act, and another does not rebuke him for it, the latter is guilty of not asserting the truth; but if he sanctions the same,