With regard to Duke George of Saxony, all that Luther had as yet heard about him was that he was incessantly bringing fresh complaints about him to the Elector, that he rigorously excluded the new teaching from his own territory, and, what was more, that, he was anxious to go on from the conquest of the peasants to the suppression of Lutheranism, which had been the cause, he declared, of all the mischief. Now, however, Luther learned from certain Saxon nobles, that the Duke himself was not so unfavourably disposed to the cause, and was willing to treat with mildness and toleration those who preached or confessed the gospel; that it was with Luther personally that he was so offended and irritated. Luther wrote to him on December 22 of this year. 'I have been advised,' he says, 'once more to entreat your Grace in this letter, with all humility and friendship, for it almost seems to me as if God, our Lord, would soon take some of us from hence, and the fear is that Duke George and Luther may also have to go.' He then entreats, with all submission, his pardon for whatever wrong he had done the Duke by writing or in speech; but of his doctrine he could, for conscience' sake, retract nothing. Luther, however, did not humble himself to George as he had done to King Henry, and his letter bears his characteristic sharpness of tone. He assured the Duke, however, that, with all his former severity of language towards him, he was a better friend to him than all his sycophants and parasites, and that the Duke had no need to pray to God against him. Luther undoubtedly wrote the two letters, as he himself says of the one to Henry, with a simple and honest heart. They show, indeed, how much genuine good-nature, and at the same time how strange an ignorance of the world and of men, was combined in him together with a passionate zeal for combat. George answered him at once with ferocity, and, as Luther says, with the coarseness of a peasant. The prince, otherwise not ignoble, was so embittered by hatred against the heretic as to reproach him with the vulgarest motives of avarice, ambition, and the lust of the flesh. Never had Luther, even with his worst enemies, stooped to such personal slander. Concerning the answer which came afterwards from King Henry, as well as the reply of Erasmus, we shall speak further on.