are seriously ill.^ As the weather is bad and the season dan- gerous, I am very anxious about you. For though God has given you a strong, tough body, yet your age and the in- clemency of the weather give me disquieting thoughts. None of us are or should be sure of our bodies at any time. I would have come to you personally with the greatest willingness, but my good friends advised me against it, and have persuaded me not to, and I myself thought it better not to tempt God by putting myself in peril, for you know how lords and peasants feel towards me. But it would be the greatest joy to me if it were possible to you and mother to come hither, which Katie and all of us beg with tears that you will do. I hope we should receive you right well. Therefore I am sending Cyriac Kauf- mann,* my nephew, to see whether your weakness would allow you to be moved. For, however, in God's wisdom, your illness turns out, whether you live or die, it would be a heartfelt joy to me to be with you again, and show my gratitude to God and to you according to the fourth commandment, with filial piety and service.
In the meantime I pray that Father, Who has made you my father, from the bottom of my heart, that He will strengthen you according to his immeasurable kindness, and enlighten and protect you with His Spirit, so that you may receive with joy and thanksgiving the blessed teaching of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, to which doctrine you have now been called and to which you have come out of the former terrible darkness and error; and I hope that His grace, which has given you such knowledge, and thereby begun His work in you, will guard and complete it to the end of this life, and to the joyous hereafter of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. God has sealed this teaching and faith in you already, and has testified to it by such signs as that you have suffered much slander, abuse, obloquy, mockery, scorn, hatred and odium for His name's sake, as we all have done. These are the true signs of our likeness to the Lord Christ, as Paul says, that we
^Hant Lather died May 39* i53o.
- A son of one of Luther's sisters and her hnshand, George Kmnfmann, of Mcb»>
fekL The boy matriculated at Wittenberg, NoTember aa, 1549, liring at Luther^ house. He accompanied his uncle to Peate Coburg in 1530. In later Hfe he be* came a judge at Mansfeld.
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