Later, in 1545, considering the “deception and depravity” of the Papacy Luther thought himself justified in insinuating in a writing against the Catholic Duke Henry of Brunswick,[288] then a prisoner, that the Pope had furnished him supplies for his unfortunate warlike enterprise against the allies of the evangelical confession. Of this there was not the shadow of a proof. The contrary is clear from Protestant documents and protocols.[289] The Court of the Saxon Electorate, where an insult to the Emperor was apprehended, was aghast at Luther’s resolve to publish the charge concerning the “equipment from Italy,” and Chancellor Brück hastened to request him to alter the proofs for fear of evil consequences.[290] Luther, however, was in no mood to yield; the writing comprising this malicious insinuation and other falsehoods was even addressed in the form of a letter to the Saxon Elector and the allied Princes. At the same time the author, both in the text and in his correspondence, gave the impression that the writing had been composed without the Elector’s knowledge and only at the request of “many others, some of them great men,” though in reality, as Protestants admit, the “work had been written to order,” viz. at the instigation of the Electoral Court.[291] “We all know,” Luther says, seemingly with the utmost gravity, in this work against the Duke, “that Pope and Papists desire our death, body and soul. We, on the other hand, desire to save them with us, soul and body.”[292] There is no need to waste words on the intentions here ascribed to the Papists. As to Luther’s own good intentions so far as the material welfare of the Papists goes, what he says does not tally with the wish he so loudly expressed at that very time for the bloody destruction of the Pope. Further, as regards the Papists’ souls, what he said of his great opponent, Archbishop Albert of Mayence, deserves to be mentioned: “He died impenitent in his sins and must be damned eternally, else the Christian faith is all wrong.”[293] Did Luther perhaps write this with a heavy heart? Yet he also condemns in advance the soul of the unhappy Duke of Brunswick, “seeing there is no hope of his amendment,” and “even though he should feign to repent and become more pious,” yet he would not be trusted since “he might pretend to repent and amend merely in order to climb back to honour, lands and people, which assuredly would be nothing but a false and foxy repentance.”[294] Hence he insists upon the Princes refusing to release the Duke. But even his own friends will not consider his religious motives for this very profound or genuine, for instance, when he says: Were he to be released, “many pious hearts would be saddened and their prayers for your Serene Highnesses become tepid and cold.”[295] His political reasons were no less founded on untruth. The only object of the League of the Catholic Princes was to seize