Page:The letters of Martin Luther.djvu/282

 so, I beg your forgiveness for having done it in the innocence of my heart solely to please you, and I am sure you’ll forgive me with your usual amiability. They have only sent me these two copies from Wittenberg — the other I am sending to Coban Hesse; I would have liked to send copies to those excellent men — Spengler and Link. Meantime I have committed them to our flying messenger without even reading them, and have not kept one. May the Lord Jesus, our salvation, keep you till His day.

Amen.MARTIN LUTHER. (Walch, 5:21. 1214.)

CCXLIII
TO PHILIP MELANCHTHON

Reports from Augsburg reach Luther.

August 24, 1530.

Grace and peace! I fancy you know ere this, dear Philip, of the new commission of fourteen men at Augsburg, you and Eck being the principal, and Spalatin, the scribe, which I almost wonder at. And what is more, the Pope, after the raising of the siege of Florence, was surrounded in St. Engelsberg, Rome, by the Roman army. We poor hermits have nothing to do but write the news to you orators, who resemble the frogs on the island of Seriphos.

I enclose the treatise on the schools — a real Lutheran document, whose prolixity even its author cannot deny. It is my nature. The little book about the Keys has the same fault. God willing, I shall next write on justification. I hear the plague is in Wittenberg, the Leipsic students having brought it. Four have died, and two houses are shut up. No one except Lufft wrote me about it — not even my wife. The Captain and the young Prince Hans Ernest are still there, so you need not be anxious. The Lord, who sent you to Augsburg, make you great and glorious there! I am again troubled with hoarseness, and fear a return of my old malady, but perhaps it is only an onslaught of Satan, but if Christ conquers let Luther perish. Are Cyriac and Caspar