Philip, in his next letter a week later, came at once to the crucial point, the question of resistance. He reminded Luther of the memorandum in which he had said, they must indeed not “commence the war, but that if they were attacked they might defend themselves” (p. 50 f.). Philip, without further ado, explains his plans against the Emperor. The Emperor, he says with perfect frankness, “took the oath to his Princes at his election, just as much as they did to him.... Hence, if the Emperor does not keep his oath to us, he reduces himself to the rank of any other man, and must no longer be regarded as a real Emperor, but as a mere breaker of the peace.” The “most important of the Electors and Estates” had not agreed to the Reichstagsabschied. Hence there was hope of triumphing over the Emperor. In his letter to Luther, he even makes use of comparisons from the Bible, just as Luther himself was in the habit of doing, and this he did again at a later date when seeking Luther’s sanction for his bigamy. “God in the Old Testament did not forsake His people or allow the country to perish which trusted in Him.” He had come to the aid of the Bohemians and of “many other too, against Emperors and such-like, who treated their subjects with unjust violence.” This being so, he requests Luther for his “advice and opinion” whether force may not be used, seeing that “His Majesty is determined to re-establish the devil’s doctrine.”[139] Luther now saw himself obliged openly to avow his standpoint, all the more as a similar request had reached him from the Elector, in this case possibly a verbal one. He left the Landgrave to wait and replied first to the Elector, though only by word of mouth, so as not to commit himself irretrievably on so delicate a matter. What his reply exactly was is not known. At the end of October he had to go to Torgau for a conference on the subject with the Elector’s legal advisers and possibly those of other Princes. Melanchthon and Jonas accompanied him, and the negotiations were protracted and lively.[140] During these negotiations Luther replied from Torgau, on October 28, to the letter from the Landgrave referred to above, though in general and evasive terms. He says, he hopes no blood will be shed, but, in the event of things going so far, he had told the Elector his opinion on resistance, and of this the Landgrave would hear in due season; that it would be dangerous for him, as an ecclesiastic, to put this into writing, for many reasons.[141] Hence for the nonce he was determined to express himself only verbally on this tiresome question.