Many arise against me, but with “a breath of my mouth” I blow them over.—All their prints are mere “autumn leaves.”[1164]
“One only of my opponents, viz. Latomus, is worth his salt, he is the scribe who writes best against me. Latomus alone has really written against Luther, make a note of that! All the others, like Erasmus, were but frogs. Not one of them really meant it seriously. Yes indeed all, Erasmus included, were just croaking frogs.”[1165]
I have been tried in the school of temptations; “these are the exalted temptations which no Pope has ever understood,” I mean, “being tempted to blasphemy and to question God’s Judgments when we know nothing either of sin or of the remedy.”[1166]
Because I have destroyed the devil’s kingdom “many say I was the man foretold by the Prophet of Lichtenberg; for in their opinion I must be he. This was a prophecy of the devil, who well saw that the kingdom he had founded on lies must fall. Hence he beheld a monk, though he could not tell to which Order he belonged.”[1167]
“Be assured of this, that no one will give you a Doctor of Holy Scripture save only the Holy Ghost who is in heaven.... He indeed testified aforetimes against the prophet by the mouth of the she-ass on which the prophet rode. Would to God we were worthy to have such doctors sent us!”[1168]
“I have become a great Doctor, this I am justified in saying; I would not have thought this possible in the days of my temptations” when Staupitz comforted me with the assurance, “that God would make use of me as His assistant in mighty things.”[1169]
“St. John Hus” was not alone in prophesying of me that ... “they will perforce have to listen to the singing of a swan,” but likewise the prophet at Rome foretold “the coming hermit who would lay waste the Papacy.”[1170]
When I was a young monk and lay sick at Erfurt they said to me: “Be consoled, good bachelor ... our God will still make a great man of you. This has been fulfilled.”[1171]
“On one occasion when I was consoling a man on the loss of his son he, too, said to me: ‘You will see, Martin, you will become a great man!’ I often call this to mind, for such words have something of the omen or oracle about them.”[1172]