e 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.

I also know that in Rom. 3, the word "solum" is not present in
either Greek or Latin text--the papists did not have to teach me
that--it is fact! The letters s-o-l-a are not there. And these
knotheads stare at them like cows at a new gate, while at the same
time they do not recognize that it conveys the sense of the text--if
the translatio