Luther, on the contrary, set his face as resolutely now as in the affair of Pack, against any appeal to the sword in support of the gospel. He would have his friends rely on God and not on the wit of man; and, with regard to the last Diet, he was quite content that God had not allowed their enemies to rage even more. He was willing even to trust to the Emperor for relief; the Evangelical party, he said, should represent to his Majesty how their sole concern was for the gospel and for the removal of abuses which no one could deny to exist; how, at the same time, they had resisted the iconoclasts and other riotous fanatics, nay, how the suppression of the Anabaptists and the peasants was pre-eminently due to them, and how they had been the first to bring to light and vindicate the rights and majesty of authority. A representation of this kind, he hoped, must surely have an influence on the Emperor. He flatly rejected any alliance with those,--namely, the Swiss,--who 'strive thus against God and the Sacrament;' such an alliance would disgrace the gospel and draw down their sins upon their heads. This opinion, in which the other Wittenberg theologians, and especially Melancthon, concurred, determined that of the Elector. The Landgrave did his utmost to remove this obstacle to an alliance with the Swiss. He urged a personal conference between the rival theologians on the question of the Sacrament. Luther and Melancthon were strongly opposed to such a step, inasmuch as the course of the controversy hitherto had not revealed a single point which offered any hope of reconciliation or mutual approach. Luther reminded him how, ten years before, the Leipzig disputation served only to make bad worse. Intrigues, moreover, were apprehended from the other side, lest the Lutherans should be held up to odium as the enemies of unity and obstacles to an alliance, and the Landgrave be alienated from them. Melancthon, indeed, had brought with him from Spires, where he had been staying with Philip, a suspicion that the latter inclined to the Zwinglians, and was right in his conjecture at least so far, that their doctrine did not appear to him nearly so questionable as to the Wittenbergers. But the simple fear of consequences made Luther unwilling and unable to refuse the Landgrave's urgent invitation, backed as it was with the concurrence of the Elector. He wrote to him on June 23, declaring his readiness to 'render him this useless service with all diligence,' and only entreated him to consider once more whether it would do more good than harm. The conference was to take place at the Castle of Marburg on Michaelmas day (1529).