#2203-To Veit Dietrich,Preacher in Nuernberg

Grace and peace in Christ! We wish you happiness, my dear Veit, that you have taken part in the desired marriage and I plead for you it will go well. However not exccedingly so with everything going being like the skill of husbands so that perhaps you might make the holy Paul a liar who dares us to oppose the favored and heated husbands and says (1 cor.7:28):"Such people have physical troubles". If sometime the case should arise that it appears that Paul has spoken truly as you would want: then consider proving yourself as a man who can bear the weakness of a wife and extol like Peter (1 Pet.3:7) to rather preserve the manly rule so that you achieve the righteous wrath and then also not concede all power. However, what I teach, as the sow teaches Minerva, that the love of wedding glows yet so impetuously that you an hundred eligible (marititias) women (as now your new one is) could rule. Much more I wish you happiness in your call to the administration of the church. I pray and hope as well that you will not yield anything from the form of doctrine which here you rather have drawn than drunk. And I have arranged with the Doctor Hieronymous Schaller that he should say to you in my name that you should not permit any heathen (gentile) way rule you although you likely sometime may be tempted which in German is called "Dunkelfein" that is, namely, one who "dances well". Since you see what great unrest has been caused to be spread by those who have gone out from among us. Therfore I want that you greet your wife from me and pray that with all the powers of body and soul she earnestly defends so that you do not become an adulterer with that very lovely whore who is named Eigendunkel (philantia) and you be free from that burning desire if it perhaps stirs you as Paul in the letter to Titus (1:7) teaches: (may authaday GK.) (not pleasing yourself); you know what he meant. Be it well with you in the LOrd. My lord (Kaethe) greets you and wishes you happiness in marriage as well as in the preaching-office, and you, on the other hand, pray for us. Wittenberg on the 14th of January Anno 1536. Your Martin Luther,D.