To Vincomalus, Master of the Offices

I was greatly astonished to learn that your magnificence, though you are quite unacquainted with me and mine and knew only the wrong that had been done to me, stood up as my advocate and left no means untried to undo the results of the conspiracy against me. But your excellency will surely receive a reward from our bountiful Lord, for he who promised to give a reward for a little water will doubtless give a greater reward to those who give greater gifts. [a]

I have indeed endured such sufferings as none, or at least very few, of the people of old ever underwent, and this not only from my open enemies but, as I understand it, from my real friends. The first attacked me; the second betrayed me.

Who in the world ever heard of such a trial? Who ever ordered a criminal to be tried in his absence, after chaining him up more than seven hundred miles away? What judge was ever so savage and inhuman as not only to try men, but to condemn men whose voice he had never heard, and to do it in the most savage and inhuman fashion? The Lord has ordered that the erring brother who rejects advice be treated, after a first, second and third warning, as “a pagan and a tax collector.” Yet these most fair and righteous judges have not given even those of their own faith the treatment they give to pagans and tax collectors. Those they do see, and sometimes talk with, and with all honor and deference where they seem to be people of rank and standing. But me they have ordered to be cut off from home, from water, from everything. This is how they have chosen to become imitators of our Father in heaven, “who makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” But I will say no more of these men. The judgment seat of the Lord is near, where what is required is not stage pretense but the reality of a life. Now I beg your excellency to give my thanks to the emperor, lover of Christ and victorious, and to the very pious and godly Augusta, for making true religion the firm root of their pious empire. And implore their majesties to make the peace of the churches firm by ordering a council to assemble: not of violent men who throw the discussion into confusion, but of lovers of the truth who confirm the apostolic teaching and reject this newfangled and spurious heresy. And I pray that you may reap the fruit of these honorable efforts at the hands of our loving Lord. [c]