Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/362

 Grace answer me graciously and piously with living deeds rather than with dead letters. God bless you. Your Grace's humble, devoted servant,

Martin Luther.

��721. DUKE GEORGE OF SAXONY TO LUTHER. Enders, v, 285. German. Dresden^ December 28^ 1525.

Your letter reached us on the birthday of Christ, Whose peace and grace we wish you, as you did to us, and we wish you also knowledge of yourself. We wish you to understand clearly that our conscience is free in God our Saviour, that although you provoked us so much in your letters, we answer you without hatred, but only out of the desire to bring you to a knowledge of yourself, without any hyprocrisy. As you think we are surroimded by hyprocrites we give you this testi- mony : if we speak hypocritically in this letter you may freely say that you may judge us by this sample — ^as a glass of wine tastes like the barrel of wine from which it is drawn — ^but if we do not dissemble herein, then seek the hypocrites among those who would make you a prophet, a Daniel, an apostle of the Germans and an evangelist. . ..

You attacked us bitterly against the law of God and the Gospel, for you certainly know what God has commanded you to do to your neighbor. You falsely stabbed us in the back and by name in a letter to Hartmuth von Cronberg* (time has shown how praiseworthy your action was!) calling us a tyrant and an apostate, reviling our person and slander- ing our body and mind, with many slippery, crafty words, the like of which you will not find in the Bible, by whose example you justify your calumny.

We thereupon wrote you * graciously, according to the Saxon form, to discover your guilt or innocence in the matter, and would have much rather have found you innocent. But you, of your rage and indecency, wrote us a bitter answer, attack- ing us further with untruths and called us your "ungracious lord," * for which we have given you no cause by our simple


 * ^ Supra, no. $36. * Supra, no. 56a. * Supra, no, ^^^

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