We have seen that bungler from Dresden play master to my New Testament. (I will not mention his name in my books as he has his judge and is already well- known). He does admit that my German is good and sweet and that he could not improve it. Yet, anxious to dishonor it, he took my New Testament word for word as it was written, and removed my prefaces and glosses, replacing them with his own. Then he published my New Testament under his name! Dear Children, how it pained me when his prince in a detestable preface condemned my work and forbid all from reading Luther's New Testament, while at the same time commending the Bungler's New Testament to be read - even though it was the very same one Luther had written!
So no one thinks I am lying, put Luther's and the Bungler's New Testaments side by side and compare them. You will see who did the translation for both. He has patched it in places and reordered it (and although it does not all please me) I can still leave it be for it does me no particular harm as far as the document is concerned. That is why I never intended to write in opposition to it. But I did have a laugh at the great wisdom that so terribly slandered, condemned and forbade my New Testament, when it was published under my name, but required its reading when published under an other's name! What type of virtue is this that slanders and heaps shame on someone else's work, and then steals it, and publishes it under one's own name, thereby seeking glory and esteem through the slandered work of someone else! I leave that for his judge to say. I am glad and satisfied that my work (as St. Paul also boasts ) is furthered by my enemies, and that Luther's work, without Luther's name but that of his enemy, is to be read. What better vengeance?!
Returning to the issue at hand, if your Papist wishes to make a great fuss about the word "alone" (sola), say this to him: "Dr.
Martin Luther will have it so and he says that a papist and an ass are the same thing." Sic volo, sic iubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas. (I will it, I command it; my will is reason enough) For we are not going to become students and followers of the papists.
Rather we will become their judge and master. We, too, are going to be proud and brag with these blockheads; and just as St. Paul brags against his madly raving saints, I will brag over these asses of mine! They are doctors? Me too. They are scholars? Iam as well. They are philosophers? And I. They are dialecticians? I am too. They are lecturers? So am I. They write books? So do I.
I will go even further with my bragging: I can exegete the psalms and the prophets, and they cannot. I can translate, and they cannot. I can read Holy Scriptures, and they cannot. I can pray, they cannot. Coming down to their level, I can do their dialectics and philosophy better than all of them put together.
Plus I know that not one of them understands Aristotle. If, in fact, any one of them can correctly understand one part or chapter of Aristotle, I will eat my hat! No, I am not overdoing it for Ihave been educated in and have practiced their science since my childhood. I recognize how broad and deep it is. They, too, know that everything they can do, I can do. Yet they handle me like a stranger in their discipline, these incurable fellows, as if I had just arrived this morning and had never seen or heard what they know and teach. How they do so brilliantly parade around with their science, teaching me what I grew beyond twenty years ago!
To all their shouting and screaming I join the harlot in singing:
"I have known for seven years that horseshoe nails are iron."So this can be the answer to your first question. Please do not give these asses any other answer to their useless braying about that word "sola" than simply "Luther will have it so, and he says that he is a doctor above all the papal doctors." Let it remain at that. I will, from now on, hold them in contempt, and have already held them in contempt, as long as they are the kind of people that they are - asses, I should say. And there are brazen idiots among them who have never learned their own art of sophistry - like Dr. Schmidt and Snot-Nose, and such like them.
They set themselves against me in this matter, which not only transcends sophistry, but as St. Paul writes, all the wisdom and understanding in the world as well. An ass truly does not have to sing much as he is already known for his ears.
For you and our people, however, I shall show why I used the word "sola" - even though in Romans 3 it wasn't "sola" I used but "solum" or "tantum". That is how closely those asses have looked at my text! However, I have used "sola fides" in other places, and I want to use both "solum" and "sola". I have continually tried translating in a pure and accurate German. It has happened that I have sometimes searched and inquired about a single word for three or four weeks. Sometimes I have not found it even then.
I have worked Meister Philip and Aurogallus so hard in translating Job, sometimes barely translating 3 lines after four days. Now that it has been translated into German and completed, all can read and criticize it. One can now read three or four pages without stumbling one time - without realizing just what rocks and hindrances had once been where now one travels as as if over a smoothly-cut plank. We had to sweat and toil there before we removed those rocks and hindrances, so one could go along nicely.
The plowing goes nicely in a clear field. But nobody wants the task of digging out the rocks and hindrances. There is no such thing as earning the world's thanks. Even God cannot earn thanks, not with the sun, nor with heaven and earth, or even the death of his Son. It just is and remains as it is, in the devil's name, as it will not be anything else.
