Most Serene and Illustrious Prince, Lord, and dearest friend, please accept my warmest greetings and best wishes.

Your Royal Highness may most certainly assure yourself that nothing could have been more welcome to me, nor more desired by me, than Your Serene Highness's letters, which came into my hands (as they say) on the first of January, particularly because they bear witness in their very address to the special degree of love which Your Highness bears towards me. When the matter is duly weighed, it is easy to appreciate just how much ought to be made of this – and first of all because I in return have a long while loved Your Royal Highness on account of your outstanding virtues and illustrious achievements, and have not ceased in that love for you even to this day. And although Your Highness's letters, as far as the Lutheran business is concerned, seem in their royal modesty to have attributed perhaps more to myself than I may allow, this however I frankly and truly admit: as soon as the godless and profane dogmas of Luther sprang up, they so turned my stomach from the very outset that I devoted all the energy and attention at my command to withstanding this monstrous undertaking and halting its progress; and today, relenting in my purpose not one jot, I leave no stone unturned in combating such hateful impiety. For could anyone who has at heart the peace of the Christian Republic (for which even to die ought to seem but little) bear with equanimity to see our sacrosanct and pure faith defiled with such temerity? Who would not weep at the plight of our faith, now tottering and trampled down and almost trodden underfoot, and at the wretched overthrow of so many souls, or rather, who on account of this would not sob from the bottom of his heart? Who, finally, having taken up the arms of holy scripture would not plunge like a most fierce champion into the midst of the enemies of the faith and, engaging in hand to hand combat with the foe, undertake her pious defence? Which, O renowned King, Your Royal Excellency has never yet attempted without happily completing what you have begun.