172 LUTHER'S CORRESPONDENCE AND Let 13?
now wholly occupied. He intends to write a meditation or the passion of the Lord/ Yesterday we received letters anc books from Basle.* Every good man thinks well of oui cause. Froben has sent a little book of Erasmus, the Methoi of Theology* in which that celebrated man seems to touch o many things, which have been touched by Luther, and b seems to be freer in his treatment of them because he has companion in this sacred and true knowledge. . . .
137. POPE LEO X. TO LUTHER AT WITTENBERG. Enders, i. 491. Viixa Maguana/ March 29, 151$
Beloved Son, greeting and the apostolic blessing ! We wen highly pleased to learn from the letter* written by our belovc< son and nuncio, Charles von Miltitz, to our beloved son, th< noble Frederic, Elector of Saxony, that what had been incor rectly written or said by you, was not done with the plan an< purpose of attacking us or the apostolic see or the Hoi] Roman Church, but because you were provoked by a certaii monk commissioned by our beloved son Albert, Cardinal Arch bishop of Mayence, to publish certain indulgences. We lean that it was while attacking him that you went further thai you would have wished, and exceeded the bounds of decorun and truth, and that when you had sufficiently considered wha you had said, you were heartily grieved, and were prepare to revoke everything in writing, and to notify the princes an others to whom your works had come, of your error, and i future to abstain from similar expressions. We also lear that you would have revoked everything before our legate had you not feared that he would have favored the moni whom you consider the cause of your error, and have to< severely reprimanded you.
We, therefore, considering that the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh weak, and that many things are said in the hea of anger which must later be corrected by saner counsel
iRcprintcd, Weimar, ii. 131 flF.
«7. e., from Froben. Cf, his letter to Luther, February 14, 1519. ^Ratio seu compendium verae theoloffiae. Basle, Froben, January, 15x9. «Leo*s hunting lodge on the Tiber, ten miles from Rome.
fiThis letter is lost. Evidently Miltitz had written over-sanguinely of his ancccfl with Luther. Smith, op. cit., 56.
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