nder 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? I
am 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 I
have 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
giv