All this is plain enough and should suffice to secure Luther against the charge of favoring polygamy.  The seeming admission that polygamy might be permissible relates to cases for which the laws of all civilized nations make provisions.  How a Christian must conduct himself in such a case must be decided on the evidence in each case.  Likewise, the reference to the Christian’s liberty from the law does not mean that the Christian has the potential right to polygamy, but it means that he must maintain his monogamous relation from a free and willing choice to obey God’s commandments in the power of God’s grace.  Polygamy, this is the firm conviction of Luther, could only be sanctioned if there were a plain command of God to that effect.  Luther’s remarks about matrimony among the Turks should be remembered when Catholics cite Luther’s remarks about King Ahasuerus dismissing Vashti and summoning Esther, and the right of the husband to take to himself his maid-servant when his wife refuses him.  By all divine and human laws the matter to which Luther refers is a just ground for divorce, and that is all that Luther declares.

But did not Luther sanction the bigamy of Philip of Hesse?  So he did.  Luther’s decision in this case must be studied in the light of all the evidence which we possess.  Catholic theologians, before all others, should be able to appreciate Luther’s claim that what was said to the Landgrave was said to him “in the person of Christ,” as the counsel which a confessor gave to a burdened conscience.  Catholics fail to mention that Luther repelled bigamous thoughts in Philip of Hesse fourteen years before the Landgrave took Margaret von der Saal.  The evidence was found in the state archives at Kassel, now at Marburg, in a fragment of a letter which Niedner published in the Zeitschrift fuer historische Theologie, 1852, No. 2, p. 265.  The letter is dated November 28, 1526; Philip’s bigamous marriage took place March 9, 1540.  In this letter Luther says to Philip:  “As regards the other matter, my faithful warning and advice is that no man, Christians in particular, should have more than one wife, not only for the reason that offense would be given, and Christians must not needlessly give, but most diligently avoid giving, offense, but also for the reason that we have no word of God regarding this matter on which we might base a belief that such action would be well-pleasing to God and to Christians.  Let heathen and Turks do what they please.  Some of the ancient fathers had many wives, but they were urged to this by necessity, as Abraham and Jacob, and later many kings, who according to the law of Moses obtained the wives of their friends, on the death of the latter, as an inheritance.  The example of the fathers is not a sufficient argument to convince a Christian:  he must have, in addition, a divine word that makes him sure, just as they had a word of that kind from God.  For where there was no need or cause, the ancient fathers did not have