Note 124 — Chapter IV

Martin Luther allowed Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, for political reasons, to intermarry with a second wife, the first being still living. (‘Memoirs of Luther,’ translated by M. Michelet: 1836. See also ‘Athenæum,’ June 18, 1836.) The Reformer, who said, ‘If Sarah refuses, take Hagar,’ regarded, like all the early Christians, saints and sinners, marriage as a purely civil rite. He never hesitated, when the object of union was impeded, to grant letters of divorce, and he notably held that the polygamy practised under the Mosaic dispensation was lawful in modern times. ‘For my part,’ he declares, ‘I confess that I cannot oppose the man who may wish to marry several wives, and that I do not think such plurality contrary to the Holy Scriptures.’ This is true wisdom. Human liberty has been sufficiently abridged without imagining further curtailments.