The comparison between Christ’s sayings and Luther’s had best be quietly dropped. As to the parallel with the Apostle of the Gentiles--his so-called boasting (2 Cor. xi. 16; xii. 1 ff.) and his frequent and humble admissions of frailty--St. Paul certainly has no need to fear comparison with Luther. He could have set before the world other proofs of his Divine mission, and yet he preferred to make the most humble confessions: “But for myself I will glory in nothing but in my infirmities,” says Paul ... “gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may dwell in me; for which cause I please myself in my infirmities, in reproaches, necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ. For when I am weak then am I powerful ... although I be nothing, yet the signs of my apostleship have been wrought in you in all patience, in signs and wonders and mighty deeds.” “For I am the least of the Apostles, who am not worthy to be called an Apostle because I persecuted the Church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am and His grace hath not been void, but I have laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I but the grace of God with me.” “But we became little ones in the midst of you, as if a nurse should cherish her children: so desirous of you, we would gladly impart unto you not only the Gospel of God but also our own souls because you were become most dear to us.... You are our glory and joy” (2 Cor. xii. 5 ff.; 1 Cor. xv. 9; 1 Thess. ii. 7 ff.). “God has appointed me for the whole of the German land,” Luther continues, “and I boldly vouch and declare that when you obey me in this [the founding of Evangelical schools] you are without a doubt obeying not me but Christ, and that, whoever obeys me not, despises, not me, but Christ [Luke xx. 16]. For I know well and am certain of what and whereto I speak and teach.”[1186] “And now, dear Germans, I have told you enough; you have heard your prophet; God grant we may obey His words.”[1187] As Germany does not obey “misery” must needs overtake it; “when I pray for my beloved Germany I feel that my prayer recoils on me and will not ascend upwards as it does when I pray for other things.... God grant that I be wrong and a false prophet in this matter.”[1188] “Our Lord God had to summon Moses six times; me, too, He has led in the same way.... Others who lived before me attacked the wicked and scandalous life of the Pope; but I assailed his very doctrine and stormed in upon the monkery and the Mass, on which two pillars the whole Papacy rests. I could never have foreseen that these two pillars would fall, for it was almost like declaring war on God and all creation.”[1189] “I picked the first fruits of the knowledge and faith of Christ, viz. that we are justified by faith in Christ and not by works.”[1190] “I am he to whom God first revealed it.”[1191]