"By these trickeries they are preparing to assault the cause of letters, now just beginning to flourish, and also that purified theology which is learning to know once more its own true sources. Nothing is left untried; every sort of calumny is thought out against those by whose work these studies seem to be growing; and among these they reckon me. Now, how much of importance I have contributed I know not, but surely I have striven with all my might to kindle men from those chilling argumentations in which they had so long been frozen up, to zeal for a theology which should be at once more pure and more serious. And that this labour has so far not been in vain I perceive from this, that certain persons are furious against me, who cannot value anything which they are not able to teach and are ashamed to learn. But, trusting to Christ as my witness, whom my writings above all would guard, to the judgment of your Holiness, to my own sense of right, and the approval of so many distinguished men, I have always disregarded the yelpings of these people. Whatever little talent I have, it has been, once for all, dedicated to Christ; it shall serve his glory alone; it shall serve the Roman Church, the prince of that Church, but especially your Holiness, to whom I owe more than my whole duty. "I might, if I had listened to other arguments, have been advanced to wealth and dignities; I can prove by the most solemn testimony that what I am saying is true. But this seemed to me a greater reward; I preferred to serve the glory of Christ, rather than my own. From a boy I have made it my care never to write anything irreligious or scurrilous or against authority. Or if I formerly chattered away a little too freely, after the habit of youth, certainly nothing becomes my present age but serious and holy things. No one was ever made one hair the blacker or the less religious by my writings; no disturbance has ever arisen or ever shall arise on my account. No malice of my accusers shall ever overcome this fixed determination of my mind. Let others see to it what they write; I am not judging the slave of another; let every man stand or fall to his own master. My only grief is that through the bitter controversies of some persons the peace of learning and of the Christian commonwealth is being endangered." Here he seems to shift his ground from the attacks of the men of darkness to the Lutheran "tragedy."