Page:The letters of Martin Luther.djvu/108

 see from the enclosed treatise how I have welcomed my ass Emser. MARTIN LUTHER. (Schutze.)

LVI
TO GEORGE SPALATIN

Spalatin was so alarmed at Luther’s temerity, that when near Worms he sent a messenger to him to remind him of Huss’s fate.

Luther sent him back to say that he would come to Worms if there were as many devils there as tiles on the house-tops.

April 14, 1521.

Health! We come, my dear Spalatin, although Satan has tried to prevent me through illness. For the whole way from Eisenach to here I have been very weak, and am still much weaker than I ever felt before.

But I also perceive that the Emperor Charles’s mandate has been printed in order to fill me with fear. But Christ lives! and we shall enter Worms in defiance of the gates of hell and all the powers of the air!

When once there we shall see what is to be done, and Satan need not puff himself up, for we have every intention of frightening and despising him.

So get a lodging ready for me. Farewell. MARTIN LUTHER. FRANKFORT.

LVII
TO LUKAS CRANACH

The celebrated painter, and warm friend of the Reformation, who accompanied his Elector, John Frederick, into banishment, and died at Weimar, in 1553. April 28, 1521.

To the excellent Meister Lukas Cranach, painter in Wittenberg. My dear co-sponsor and friend, I commend you to God.

I shall submit to being hidden away, and as yet do not know where. I would have preferred being put to death by the tyrants, especially by the furious Herzog