1.  I have now received two letters from your divine and most excellent wisdom, whereof the one told me clearly how I had been expected by the laity under the jurisdiction of your holiness, and what disappointment I had caused by failing to attend the sacred synod.  The other, which from the writing I conjecture to be of the earlier date, though it was delivered later, gave me advice, at once honourable to yourself and necessary to me, not to neglect the interests of God’s Churches, nor little by little to allow the guidance of affairs to pass to our opponents, whereby their interests must win, and ours lose.  I think that I answered both.  But, as I am uncertain whether my replies were preserved by those who were entrusted with the duty of conveying them, I will make my defence over again.  As to my absence, I can put in an unimpeachable plea, as to which I think intelligence must have reached your holiness, that I have been detained by illness which has brought me to the very gates of death.  Even now as I write about it, the remains of sickness are still upon me.  And they are such as to another man might be unendurable.