Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/338

 world? Why do they not amend and teach rightly if they desire to escape censure and hatred?

Your most serene Majesty sees how many princes in Germany and how many cities and how many wise men take my part, and by God's grace cleave to the evangelical faith, by Christ's singular blessing purified by me. To which number may Christ add your Majesty and free you from these tyrants of souls. What wonder if the Emperor and some princes rage against me, as the second Psalm says: "The heathen rage against the Lord and against His Christ, the people take counsel together, the kings of the earth set themselves, and the princes enter into covenants." Rather it is wonderful that any prince or king favors the Gospel. I hope with all my heart sometime to be able to congratulate your Majesty on this miracle, and may the Lord Himself, in whose name and by whose will I write, cooperate with my words that the King of England may shortly become a perfect disciple of Christ, an adherent of the evangelical faith and Luther's most clement lord. Amen.

If your Majesty sees good to answer me I await your Majesty's clement reply.

Your Majesty's most devoted

Martin Luther^ with his own hand.

701. SIR ROBERT WINGFIELD TO WOLSEY.

Litters and Papers of Henry VIII, iv, no. 1632.

The Hague, September 8, 1525.

. . . Duke Henry of Brunswick^ has taken, beheaded and quartered two of the learned men who translated Luther's works into Latin. There are many Lutherans here, both men and women, wedded priests and schoolmasters; and commissaries sit upon them every day, but none are executed as yet, though it is supposed that within these thirteen days

^ Henry the Younger, Duke of Bmniwick-Wolfenbfittel (1489-1568) became ruler on his father's death, 1514. In order to assert his right of primogeniture he kept his brother William in prison for twelve years, 1524-36. His private life was scandalous. In 1528 he led a thousand men into Italy under the imperial banners, but returned in June of the same year to suppress the Reformation. He had constant quarrels with Hesse and Electoral Saxony. He was pilloried aa Haas Wnrst in I^nther's book of that name. ADB.