ise and thanks be to God, and hope to
hear the same of you. Dear Johann, after I had last written to you, the
wife of Johann Knoblauch died, to whom God be merciful. She was my good
friend, and her death has caused me as great grief as the decease of my
two blessed husbands, which was however a great calamity to me; but
what God wills we must bear with patience. She and I came here the same
year, and lived so friendly together that neither ever angered the
other with a word. On her death-bed she commended to me her two
daughters as if I were her sister, and begged that I should take care
of their dowry, if I should live till they married. One of them is now
marriageable, an elegant, well-formed maiden; she is in height like
your step-sister Anna, which is also her name, and she is a clever
housekeeper, so that he who has her for a portion will not be ruined by
her; I foresee that her father will soon establish her, for there are
three who woo her, two of them are noblemen, and the third is Johann
Wolf Rohrbach, the son of Frau Ursula at the green gate, who is now
grown up and has been with his mother since Easter. Although he is only
nineteen years old, yet it is the wish of his mother and his friends to
establish him whilst she is still alive. For now no one knows what to
do with their sons, that they may learn and study what is for their
soul's salvation, and not be led astray: for when they have long
studied, and spent much money, it is of little advantage to many of
them, and perhaps it would have been more profitable to them, to have
retained the innate honesty and simplicity which they have from God,
than that they should study, and not rightly understand the Scripture,
and that then the devil should lead them astray through pride, and
others with them because they are learned and know how to talk well.
Such men lead the people into great error. I would gladly write much to
you thereupon, but having promised in my last letter that I would not
write to you again thereof, I will not do so whilst you are at
Wittenberg; for you imagine that you are in safe keeping in Wittenberg.
God grant it may be true, and that you will find it so. Further, dear
Johann, know wherefore I now write to you thus---- an honourable person
has just told me that the wife of Johann Knoblauch had desired her
husband, if you and your belongings should ask his daughter in
marriage, and the daughter were willing, that he should give her to you
ra