What other will you do? For I declare to you distinctly, I will not
hear of neutrality, my loving cousin must be either friend or foe. When
I come to your frontier you must show yourselves either cold or warm.
This is a struggle between God and the devil; if my loving cousin will
hold to God, let him unite with me; but if he would rather hold to the
devil, he must henceforth fight against me, _tertium non dabitur_, of
that he may be assured.

"'Take this commission upon you to inform my loving cousin secretly of
it, for I have none with me whom I can spare to send to him. If my
loving cousin will treat with me, I will see if I can go to him myself;
but with his present arrangements I will have nothing to do.

"'My loving cousin trusts neither in God nor to his good friends. It
has gone ill with him therefore in Prussia and this country. I am the
devoted servant of my loving cousin, and love him from my heart: my
sword shall be at his service, and it shall preserve him in his
sovereignty and to his people, but he must do his part also.

"'My loving cousin has great interest in this dukedom of Pomerania;
this will I also defend for his advantage, but on the same condition as
in the book of Ruth the next inheritor is commanded to take Ruth for
his wife, so must my loving cousin take to him this Ruth; that is,
unite himself with me in this righteous business if he wishes to
inherit the country. If not, I here declare that he shall never obtain
it.

"'I am not disinclined to peace, and have conformed myself to it
contentedly. I know well that the chances of war are doubtful; I have
experienced that, in the many years in which I have carried on war with
various fortune. But as I have now, by God's grace, come so far, no one
can counsel me to withdraw, not even the Emperor himself if he were to
make use of his reason.

"'I might perhaps allow of an armistice for a month. It may appear
fitting to me that my loving cousin should mediate. But he must place
himself in a position, arms in hand, otherwise all his mediation will
avail nothing. Some of the Hanse towns are ready to unite with me. I
only wait for some one in the Empire to put himself prominently at the
head. What might not the electors of Saxony and Brandenburg together
with these cities, accomplish? Would to God that there were a Maurice!'

"Thereupon I replied that I had no commands from his Electoral Highness
to confer with his Majesty, touching an armed allian