“See what darkness prevailed among the Fathers of the Church concerning faith! Once the article concerning justification was obscured it became impossible to stem the course of error. St. Jerome writes on Matthew, on Galatians and on Titus, but how paltry it all is! Ambrose wrote six books on Genesis, but what poor stuff they are! Augustine never writes powerfully on faith except when assailing the Pelagians.... They left not a single commentary on Romans and Galatians that is worth anything. Oh, how great, on the other hand, is our age in purity of doctrine, and yet, alas, we despise it! The holy Fathers taught better than they wrote; we, God be praised, write better than we live.” Had Gregory the Great at least refrained from spoiling what remained! “He broke in with his pestilent traditions, bound men down to observances concerning flesh-meat, cowls and Masses, and imposed on them his filthy, merdiferous law. And in the event this dreadful state of things grew from day to day worse.”[1199] “On the other hand, it is plain that I may venture to boast in God, without arrogance or untruth, that, when it comes to the writing of books I am not far behind many of the Fathers.”[1200] “In short the fault lay in this, that [before I came], even in the Universities the Bible was not read; when it was read at all it had to be interpreted in accordance with Aristotle. What blindness that was!”[1201] But then my translation of Holy Scripture appeared. Whereas the Schoolmen never were acquainted with Scripture, indeed “never were at home even in the Catechism,”[1202] all admit my Bible scholarship. On one occasion “Carlstadt said to the Doctors at Wittenberg: My dear sirs, Dr. Martin is far too learned for us; he read the Bible ten years ago and now if we read it for ten years, he will then have read it for twenty; in any case, therefore, we are lost.” “Don’t start disputing with him.”[1203] “Nevertheless I never should have attained to the great abundance of Divine gifts, which I am forced to confess and admit, unless Satan had tried me with temptations; without these temptations pride would have cast me into the abyss of hell.”[1204] “The Papists are blind to the clear light of truth because it was revealed by a man. As though Elias, who wrought such great things against the servants of Baal, was not likewise a man and a beggar. As though John the Baptist, who so brilliantly put to flight the Pharisees, was not a man too. One’s being a man does not matter provided one be a man of God. For heroes are not merely men.”[1205]