your indulgence and consideration, was becoming unmanag- able, you should have remembered that you ought to obey God rather than your wife, and not have allowed her to de- spise and trample under foot the marital authority, which is the glory of God, as St. Paul tells us.^ It is going far enough when you so far give up this glory of God as to assume the form of a servant ; ' but when it is done away, wiped out and . brought to nothing, — this is too much. Therefore be a man. Bear with your wife's infirmity, but do not encourage her malice by serving her too slavishly and dishonoring the glory of God that is in you, for that would be the worst kind of an example. It is easy to tell whether it is infirmity or malice. Infirmity is to be borne with ; malice must be coerced. Infirm- ity is ready to learn and to listen, at least once in twelve hours ; malice is stubborn and resists and insists on having its own way. When she sees that you mistake her malice for infirmity, what wonder if she gets worse and worse ? But now by your own fault you are opening a window in this weaker vessel through which Satan can enter and laugh at you, and irritate you and vex you every way. You are a wise man, and the Lord will grant you to understand what I say, and see how sincerely I wish you and her to come to an agreement* and Satan to be driven oflF. Farewell in Qirist.
Martin Luther, John Bugenhagen Pomeranus.
796. LUTHER TO EOBAN HESS AT NUREMBERG.
Enders, vi, 255. WrrxENBERC, April or May,* 1528.
Grace and peace in Christ. I have received your second
^I Corintbians xi, 7.
'Philippians ii, 7.
•The whole unhappy quarrel of Roth and his wife is set forth in great detail in the letters published by Buchwald. She had gone to Zwickau with Roth, but did not like it, and accused him of unfaithfulness with the wife of Stei>han Wild. She, therefore, returned to Wittenberg in March. I<uther opined that God was thus humiliating Roth for something he had done. Ursula had been iU on the journey, but recovered in her native air. After receiving this letter of Luther and Bugenhagen, Roth sent his wife so severe a letter that she became melancholy, and Mantel warned him to be gentler. May 13. In June she finally returned to her husband, Rorer informing him that her absence was as great a relief to him as her presence was to Roth.
- This letter is without date. Enders (n. 2) surmises that Hess's letter, to which
this is a reply, was written April ao.
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