Heil! Your letters, in which you complain about our silence has cast us into great sorrow. Actually we have written profusely each week, and I do not know what turn of fate has brought this evil which is so bitter and filled with troubled concern in which we find ourselves condemned with guilt loaded on us so that you do not write to us.
I have written to you at the beginning of the Diet. The Emperor greeted our Prince very graciously, and I would have it that ours in return would be courteous to him. I would that you would admonish our younger Prince about this by letter. At the imperial court there is no one more lenient than the Emperor himself. All the rest hate us in a horrible way. These days I have been with the Salzburger (the Cardinal) who accuses me with a very long and verbose presentation of all the unrest of these years. He ascribes all these misofortunes to us and attaches a postscript written in blood to it.
Today with the good fortune and benediction of God the articles of our Confession will be delivered. Previously all the time has been devoted to the prolegomena (prooemilis) with prologue, with the presentation of the present evil, with the setting down of the Order in which the debatable poisitions will be undertaken. This goes slowly forward which is self-understood by the German. In Rome, following the meeting in Bologna (between the Kaiser and Pope), a female mule cast forth her young which had feet like nothing else. You see the downfall of Rome through schisms (schismata) is signified. Concerning the Turks, there is nothing new except that he is at home preparing for yet another move. The way our opponents threaten us indicates that they have forgotten the Turkish danger. The Landgraf (Philip of Hesse) approves of our Confesson and has subscribed to it. You could accomplish much, as I hope, if you would firm him up with your letters on the Lord's Supper. Brenz is sitting beside me as I write this and he is instructing me to insert a greeting to you from him. Be it right well with you.
On the day after John the Baptist (June 25).
[Notes: No location or signature is found on this letter, but the contents point to Philipp Melanchton, who is rightly assumed to be at the Diet of Augsburg. ]
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