it better not to give any
answer, because this matter would require a very lengthy oration, even
if it were not a matter of controversy. This is merely a brief answer on
scattered points.

The person who informed me about 'languages'[105] is one whose
trustworthiness not even you would have esteemed lightly; and he thinks
no ill of you. Indeed I have never disliked you as far as concerns
private feelings. There are persons living in your town who were
chattering here about 'all the disciplines having been invented by
godforsaken wretches'. Certainly persons of this description, whatever
name must be given them, are in the ascendancy everywhere, all studies
are neglected and come to a standstill. At Nuremberg the City Treasury
has hired lecturers, but there is no one to attend their lectures.

You assemble a number of conjectures as to why I have not joined your
church. But you must know that the first and most important of all the
reasons which withheld me from associating myself with it was my
conscience: if my conscience could have been persuaded that this
movement proceeded from God, I should have been now long since a soldier
in your camp. The second reason is that I see many in your group who are
strangers to all Evangelical soundness. I make no mention of rumours and
suspicions, I speak of things learned from experience, nay, learned to
my own injury; things experienced not merely from the mob, but from men
who appear to be of some worth, not to mention the leading men. It is
not for me to judge of what I know not: the world is wide. I know some
as excellent men before they became devotees of your faith, what they
are now like I do not know: at all events I have learned that several of
them have become worse and none better, so far as human judgement can
discern.

The third thing which deterred me is the intense discord between the
leaders of the movement. Not to mention the Prophets and the
Anabaptists, what embittered pamphlets Zwingli, Luther and Osiander
write against each other! I have never approved the ferocity of the
leaders, but it is provoked by the behaviour of certain persons; when
they ought to have made the Gospel acceptable by holy and forbearing
conduct, if you really had what you boast of. Not to speak of the
others, of what use was it for Luther to indulge in buffoonery in that
fashion against the King of England, when he had undertaken a task so
arduous with the general approval? Was he not r