What further considerations induced him to marry, appear from his letters, in which he urged his friends to do likewise. Thus he wrote on March 27 to Wolfgang Reissenbusch, preceptor of the convent at Lichtenberg, saying that man was created by God for marriage. God had so made man that he could not well do without it; whoever was ashamed of marrying, must also be ashamed of his manhood, or must pretend to be wiser than God. The devil had slandered the married state by letting people who lived in immorality be held in high honour. Luther, in thus frankly stating the natural disposition of man to married life, spoke from his own experience. 'To remain righteous unmarried,' he said once later on, 'is not the least of trials, as those know well who have made the attempt.' In referring as he did to the devil, he probably had in his mind the scandal which threatened him if he should decide on marrying. He then goes on to say to Reissenbusch that if he honoured the Word and work of God, the scandal would be only a matter of a moment, to be followed by years of honour. To Spalatin he writes on April 10: 'I find so many reasons for urging others to marry, that I shall soon be brought to it myself, notwithstanding that enemies never cease to condemn the married state, and our little wiseacres ridicule it every day.' The 'wiseacres' he was thinking of were professors and theologians of his circle at Wittenberg. Not only was he resolved, however, to obey the will of his Creator, despite all condemnation and ridicule, but he deemed it his duty to testify to the rightness of the step by his example as well as by his words. His enemies, in fact, were taunting him that he did not venture to practise himself what he preached to others. A few days after, immediately before his departure for Eisleben, he wrote again to Spalatin, recommending his friend, who had been so utterly averse to matrimony, to take care that he was not anticipated in the step.
Amidst all the terrors of the Peasants' War, which had now broken out in all its violence, and in earnest contemplation of a near end possibly threatening himself, he had formed the fixed resolve, as his letter of May 4 to Rühel shows, to 'take his Kate to wife, in spite of the devil.' This is the first letter in which he mentions her name to a friend. And to this resolve he steadily adhered during the troublous weeks that followed, when he was called on to pay the last honours to his Elector, to rouse men to the sanguinary contest with the peasants, and to hear contumely and reproach heaped upon his stirring words. Besides writing to the Cardinal Albert himself, recommending him to marry, he sent a letter also on June 3 to his friend Rühel, who held office as one of his advisers, saying, 'If my marrying might serve in any way to strengthen his Grace to do the same, I should be very willing to set his Grace the example; for I have a mind, before leaving this world, to enter the married state, to which I believe God has called me.' He had thoughts of this kind, he added, even if it should end only in a betrothal, and not an actual marriage.