Grace and peace in Christ, dear Squire. Your marriage with the virgin, related in the third degree, is of course not forbidden by God. Therefore, you may not take permission from the bishop with a good conscience. For if it is not right in the sight of God, they do as the boys that they think it is right, and then as much worse boys they refrain from making injustice right. But if it is right, no man is needed for it to be or become right.
So now you must be careful that you do not
grant into their evil to think that something is wrong, which is right, and to make right out of wrong. For even to do and to grant wrong is as much, Rom. 2:22. Wherefore, if you take permission, you give and grant that it is wrong, which you know to be right, and thereby do dangerously contrary to your conscience. For this Christ graciously keep you, amen. Given at Wittenberg on Green Thursday, Anno 1528.
Martinus Luther.