Page:History of Freedom.djvu/204

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ESSAYS ON LIBERTY

was the view which guided Luther and Melanchthon in treating the problem, the ultimate solution of which was the separation of England from the Church. When the Landgrave Philip afterwards appealed to this opinion, and to the earlier commentaries of Luther, the reformers were compelled to approve his having two wives. Melanchthon was a witness at the wedding of the second, and the only reservation was a request that the matter should not be allowed to get abroad. It was the same portion of Luther's theology, and the same opposition to the spirit of the Church in the treatment of Scripture, that induced him to believe in astrology and to ridicule the Copernican system.