Newly translated from the Latin.
May God grant that our Lord Jesus Christ enlighten us with His Spirit in such a way that we have desired nothing more than that the peace and tranquility of the Church and the glory of the Gospel be best served. By the grace of God, we have eagerly sought that our churches may lack nothing that serves the glory of Christ. Far be it from us that we should or would favor factions or divisions. For this reason, since you are looking to us by letter for help against Luther, we want to constantly do what seems to be for the benefit and peace of the church; whoever disturbs it through imprudent zeal, let him, as from Christ, so also from us, since we are concerned,
The more we are careful, the more we have to restrain your zeal, since we have been given the power to build up the Christian people. In our time, the cause of Christianity seems to be in a kind of ferment (in motu quodam); we must be all the more careful to restrain your zeal, since we have been given the power to edify, not to destroy, and we must be careful that the cause of Christianity is not presumptuously brought to ruin by factions or disunity, lest the spirit be dampened somewhere. As we do not want to have anything to do with any kind of partisanship, so we will, as much as we are able, help with advice and assistance the efforts of all those who protect the gospel of Christ in a godly way.