To the most Excellent Father, Lord Christopher, Bishop of Augsburg, his best and most solicitous patron, Johannes Eck sends greetings.

I readily acknowledge your prudence, most worthy prelate; and the more I fear for the Holy Church of God, the more I value your most circumspect judgement. But the judgements of God are immutable and, indeed, inexorable: the prophets foretold, Christ predicted, Peter forewarned, Paul prophesied, and Jude wanted us to beware how great a tribulation there would be in the last days and how great a secession from the faith, and how many false and lying prophets would rise up. How stupid we are and how foolish, or rather, what blockheads and what dunces we are, who now in the halls of princes, in the senate of the imperial cities, boast that the Gospel sun has now risen, that the radiance of the Word of God has now illuminated us mortals for the first time! Oh, God! Oh, the faith of men! We accept what Luther says, thrice apostate, perjured, inconstant, oathbreaking blasphemer that he is; oblivious meanwhile of Christ, the prophets, Peter, Paul and Jude. If the merest glimmer of faith or wisdom were still to be found among us Germans, we would not tolerate this scourge upon the Catholic Church. Yet one prompter should be quite enough for us, the most glorious King of England, Henry VIII, Defender of the Catholic Faith, who in his piety towards God and Church, and likewise in his erudition, has shown up Luther for us in his true colours. Herewith I send you his royal letter, which no doubt your Excellency, given your zeal towards the Christian religion, will receive graciously and read avidly. To make the letter more amusing, we have appended to it the Epithalamion of the Lutherans. Farewell, ornament of the priesthood and choicest of patrons. From Ingolstadt.