its last letter. He is entirely undaunted, and has already begun his new book refuting the articles in the bull, and done a sixth of it. He promises according to your Grace's advice to write more courteously henceforth. He has also begun to expound the Magnificat and to dedicate it to my young lord. . . .
The provost of Liska near Zerbst, who was charged by the Bishop of Brandenburg to execute the bull, has written Dr. Martin that he will sooner lose his provostship than do it.
Dr. Martin has gathered the canon law and decretals to burn them as soon as he hears that they have undertaken to burn his books at Leipsic. He has also decided to burn the bull publicly in the pulpit unless they mend their abuses. Dr. Martin has so long meditated the papal rule that he says he is now commanded by them to sin and do evil and forbidden to do good and even to act and live honorably and Christianly. On which a new allegorical picture has been painted which I will bring your Grace to-morrow.
I think I will bring you thirty letters to Dr. Luther from princes, lords, and learned, famous people from Swabia, Switzerland, Pomerania, Breisgau, Bodensee, Bohemia and other lands, all comfortable and Christian writings. . . .
349. WOLFGANG CAPITO TO LUTHER.
Enders, iii. 3. Mayence, December 4, 1520.
Greeting. I hear from friends that you are often threatened and that the evil increases daily; the tumor will soon burst and the whole power of its evil go elsewhere. The affair is carried on with a strange sort of violence, but it is partly human; no wonder that it has some human frailty about it, for such will always accompany humanity.
Eck has written a triumphant epistle[1] to Cologne in which he boasts of the success of Christ's work at Leipsic, for thus he calls his own sycophancy. I have never seen anything more noxious than the barbarian sophists there, fools, atheists, uncultured,[2] without style, the graces or faith, relying abso-
