We have not quoted the worst Catholic estimates of Luther's scholarship.
He has also been called a dunce, an ignoramus, a barbarian. Again it
seems to escape the Catholics that this ill-trained, insufficient,
half-baked Doctor of Divinity is a product of their own educational art.
Whatever advancement he received in those days was actually forced upon
him by Catholics. All his academic and ecclesiastical honors came from
Catholic sources, came to him, moreover, as a good Catholic. Also that
highest and noblest distinction which made him a duly called and
accredited expounder of the Holy Scriptures. If there is fault to be
found with anything in this matter, it lies with the Catholic method and
process of making a young man within the space of ten years a Bachelor
of Arts, a Master of Arts, a priest, a professor, and a Doctor of Sacred
Theology; it does not lie with the innocent subject to whom this presto!
change! process was applied.

But does this estimate of Luther square with the facts in the case? For
a dunce or a mediocre scholar Luther has been a fair success. His little
ability and scanty preparation makes his achievements all the more
remarkable. The most brilliant minds of the race, for whom the home, the
Church and the State, religion, science and art, had done their best,
have accomplished immeasurably less than this poor and mostly
self-taught country boy. God give His Church many more such dunces!

The net results of Luther's learning are open to inspection by the world
in his numerous works. Able scholars of most recent times have looked
into Luther's writings with a view of determining how much learned
knowledge he had actually acquired, even before he began his reformatory
work, They have found that Luther was "very well versed in the favorite
Latin authors of the day: Vergil, Terence, Ovid, Aesop, Cicero, Livy,