From http://beggarsallreformation.blogspot.com/2009/01/luther-i-confess-that-i-cannot-forbid.html
In a 1526 letter, Luther stated:
W.H.T. Dau points out that Catholics should use caution in this charge against Luther:
My conclusion? Catholics chastising Luther with this quote tend to make it mean more than was intended. Luther was not an "out-and-out believer in polygamy." For Luther, it was an exception. Do I agree with Luther? not at all, I would argue that even his exception is wrong, and that a case for monogamy can be made from the Bible. Once again, we find Catholics taking a very minor point made by Luther, and blowing it out proportion.
Then you have the other extremes:
Jerome’s reasoning on the issue is troubling.
He wrote: “It is not disparaging wedlock to prefer virginity. No one can make a comparison between two things if one is good and the other evil.” (’’Letter’’ 22). On First Corinthians 7 he reasons, “It is good, he says, for a man not to touch a woman. If it is good not to touch a woman, it is bad to touch one: for there is no opposite to goodness but badness. But if it be bad and the evil is pardoned, the reason for the concession is to prevent worse evil.”
Jerome further surmises, “If we are to pray always, it follows that we must never be in the bondage of wedlock, for as often as I render my wife her due [or eat, sleep, etc.], I cannot pray. The difference, then, between marriage and virginity is as great as that between not sinning and doing well; nay rather, to speak less harshly, as great as between good and better.
You surely admit that he is no bishop who during his episcopate begets children... A layman, or any believer, cannot pray unless he abstain from sexual intercourse. Now a priest must always offer sacrifices for the people: he must therefore always pray. And if he must always pray, he must always be released from the duties of marriage.”
n Genesis Jerome engages in more eisegesis of Scripture in his imbalanced view of marital relations:
This too we must observe, at least if we would faithfully follow the Hebrew, that while Scripture on the first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days relates that, having finished the works of each, God saw that it was good, on the second day it omitted this altogether, leaving us to understand that two is not a good number because it destroys unity, and prefigures the marriage compact. Hence it was that all the animals which Noah took into the ark by pairs were unclean. Odd numbers denote cleanness [so much for the Trinity]. (Against Jovinianus, Book 1, Cps. 7,13,16,33; http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf206.vi.vi.I.html )
Does [Jovinianus] imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children?...The truth is that, in view of the purity of the body of Christ, all sexual intercourse is unclean... (Against Jovinianus )
Similarly, Tertullian argued that second marriage, having been freed from the first by death,
“will have to be termed no other than a species of fornication,” partly based on the reasoning that such involves desiring to marry a women out of sexual ardor. (An Exhortation to Chastity, Chapter IX.Second Marriage a Species of Adultery, Marriage Itself Impugned, as Akin to Adultery; http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04.iii.vi.ix.html)
Augustine, On Marriage and Concupiscence (Book I, cp. 27): “...whenever it comes to the actual process of generation, the very embrace which is lawful and honourable cannot be effected without the ardour of lust, so as to be able to accomplish that which appertains to the use of reason and not of lust....This is the carnal concupiscence, which, while it is no longer accounted sin in the regenerate, yet in no case happens to nature except from sin.” http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/15071.htm
More on CFs here http://www.patriarchywebsite.com/bib-patriarchy/deception-jerome-marriage-sex.htm and them and the early church on contraception here: http://divinedisputation.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/the-early-church-and-contraception.pdf
Marriage in Scripture was “leave and cleave,” and the cleaving is part of its definition, (Gn. 2:24; Mt. 19:4,5) but the marriage of the Mary of Rome lacked that. And while Rome considers entering marriage with the intention of never having children to be a “grave wrong and more than likely grounds for an annulment.”[25] , yet she promotes praying to a women who according to Rome went thru with a marriage intending to do just that.
Once again, we find Catholics taking a very minor point made by Luther, and blowing it out proportion.Oathbreaking - his own, a "minor point"
Sigh. And yet his attacks against the very Church he was ordained in and his schism - major assaults on Christian unity - those so many PROTESTants celebrate and venerate. Sorry, Luther and his schism are evil.