It was certainly a fault that Melanchthon had overlooked this; however, he did everything he could to rectify it. He forbade the satirist to leave the city; and when he fled, and did not appear after having been summoned twice, he was expelled. However, his enemies were not satisfied yet, and Melanchthon believed it necessary to send a written justification of his conduct to the Elector. He proves that he could not have known anything of this lampoon, because he and his wife are also attacked in two places in the most virulent manner. He had not seen a page of the book until it was handed to him, and then he scarcely looked into it, regarding it as an abject petition addressed to the Bishop of Mentz; but when he had examined it more carefully, he had forbidden the author to leave the city. As he had fled, and did not appear to answer the summons, he had been expelled from the University as a traitor and calumniator. Melanchthon thus concludes: "This is indeed the truth, for by God's grace, unfaithfulness and falsehood shall never be laid to my charge." When it was said that his son-in-law Sabinus knew something of it, he added to his report: "I do not know what my son-in-law knew of, or did in this matter, for he has caused me enough sorrow in other matters, which I must labor to mend." This settled the whole matter. But these repeated attacks grieved Melanchthon exceedingly, as appears from various letters to his friends. He once wrote to Camerarius, that he felt in Wittenberg as if he was tied to Mount Caucasus. The continual, bitter sorrows which had been weighing upon his mind for years, and his daily anxieties, were preying upon him so much, that he feared he would not live much longer. CHAPTER XVIII. THE ASSEMBLY OF THE PRINCES AT FRANKFORT, AND THE VICTORIES OF THE REFORMATION.