Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/509

 could not have directed, defended and carried on the matter with our own reason.

Therefore I humbly beg and exhort your Grace to be con- fident and unalarmed at this danger. God willing, we shall accomplish more by our prayers and petitions to God than they with all their defiance of Him. Only we must keep our hands clean of blood and violence, and if it were to come to the pass (though I think it will not) that the Emperor actu- ally attacks us and demands that I or the others be given up, then, by God's help, we shall appear and not put your Grace in any danger, as I have often told your Grace's pious brother, my gracious lord, Duke Frederic.

For your Grace ought not to defend my faith or that of any other, nor can your Grace do so, but everyone must defend his own faith and believe or disbelieve at his own peril and at no one's else, if it goes so far that our overlord, the Emperor, attacks us. Meanwhile "much water is running by the mill," and God will find a way to keep things from going as they want them to. May Christ, our Lord and our Defence, bestow on your Grace the riches of His strength. Amen.

Your Grace's humble servant, Martin Luther.

860. LUTHER TO DUKE HENRY V OF MECKLENBURG.

DcWette, iii, 529.

Enders, vii, 191. German. (WnTENBERc), November 27, 1529.

Henry V, "the Peaceable" (1479-1552), on the death of his father, in 1503, began to reign in common with his three brothers. The deaths of two of them, in 1507 and 1506, left him with Albert the only sur- vivor. A partial division of the land was effected in 1534. Henry was a Protestant ADB.

Grace and peace in Christ. Serene, highborn Prince, gra- cious Lord. I doubt not that my gracious lord, the Elector of Saxony, will have written you, or will shortly write you, on my humble request,* about a publication that has been under- taken at Rostock. We have been informed by good people of Liibeck that certain Lollards * are printing Emser's Saxon

^Cf, tuther to the Elector. November 13 (DeWette, ill, sa8). Common Life. C/. Realtncyk., iii, 496.
 * These "Lollards" were the Michaelisbruder, a branch of the Brethren of the

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