"Now as exactions and extortions still continued, I could get no stipend, and yet had to assist in the superintendence of the parish of Heldburg, as well as my own, I went _cum testimonio et consilio_ of Dr. Kesler, and also with letters of recommendation to Duke Albert, to Eisenach, and represented my poverty in divers ways to the Consistory. I got a presentment and other recommendations to their Princely Highnesses, the two brothers, that I might obtain advancement in their dominions. So I went from Eisenach to Gotha, just as our honoured prince and lord, Duke Ernest, fixed his residence at the Kaufhaus: for I was present when they paid him homage at Gotha. The royal Consistory soon offered to me the parish of Notleben; but as the Notlebers were at strife with their old pastor, and there was to be a month's delay to carry on their contest, Dr. Glass persuaded me in the interim to go with my recommendation to Weimar, and to collect somewhat for my poor family. My wanderings, however, lasted till the year 1641. I returned on Tuesday the 18th of January to Gotha, and found the cure of that parish still vacant for me, which I undertook with the greatest humility and thankfulness, and preached my first sermon on the parable of the vineyard, from the 20th of Matthew. But I not only lived in great insecurity at Notleben, as one had daily to think of flight, but had also many disputes with the peasantry, who in church and school affairs had always a hankering after Erfurt, and to whom all royal ordinances with respect to the catechism were odious. I, the pastor, had to bear this from the council and peasants, and as all the stipend was paid in kind, and I was neither a tutor, nor had any other means whereby I could get on well, I humbly sought for a change of cure. When, therefore, our honoured lord, after the division of property, obtained the parish of Erock and the village of Heubach, he offered to me to become pastor there, which I had expected more than a year before. Thus in 1647, I in all humility accepted this removal, and preached my trial sermon on Judica Sunday, in the presence of the parishioners and commissaries. I received the call on the following day, and thus under God's providence brought hither my wife and child. This was my fourth piece of church preferment, where for my own part I desire, God willing, to live and die; but my wife wishes herself away, in a better place in the plains, on account of the difficulty of getting servants. I leave it in the hands of God and my superiors."