These writers claim that Luther was, in the first place, morally unfit to undertake the translation of the Bible.  To show to what desperate means Luther’s Catholic critics will resort in order to make out a case against him, we note that one of the most recent disparagers of Luther informs the public that Luther’s original name had been Luder.  This name conveys the idea of “carrion,” “beast,” “low scoundrel.”  When Luther began to translate the Bible, we are told, he changed his name into “Squire George.”  Once before this, at the time of his entering the university, Catholics note that he changed his name from Luder to Lueder.  But these changes of his name, they say, did not improve his character.  We are told that, while Luther was engaged upon the work of rendering the Bible into German, he was consumed with fleshly lust and given to laziness.  Luther’s own statements in letters to friends are cited to corroborate this assertion.  The conclusion which we are to draw from these “facts” is this:  Such a corrupt person could not possibly be a proper instrument for the Holy Spirit to employ in so pious an undertaking as the translation of the Word of God.

Catholics should be reminded that they misquote the book of matriculation in which the students at Erfurt signed their names on entering the university.  Luther’s signature is not “Lueder” but “Ludher.”  Other forms of the name “Luder” and “Lueder” occur elsewhere.  But in any form the name has a more honorable derivation and meaning than Catholic writers are inclined to give it.  It is derived from “Luither,” which means as much as “People’s Man,” (= der Leute Herr).  Another well-known form of the same name is Lothar, which some, tracing the derivation still further, derive from the old German Chlotachar, which means as much as “loudly hailed among the army” (= hluit, loud, and chari, army).  Respectable scholars to-day so explain the name Luther.

At the Wartburg, where Luther was an exile for ten months, his name was changed by the warden of the castle, Count von Berlepsch.  This was done the better to conceal his identity from the henchmen of Rome, who by the imperial edict of outlawry had been given liberty to hunt Luther and slay him where they found him.

The sexual condition of Luther during the years before his marriage was the normal condition of any healthy young man at his age.  Luther speaks of this matter as a person nowadays would speak about it to his physician or to a close friend.  The matter to which he refers is in itself perfectly pure:  it is an appeal of nature.  Do Luther’s Catholic critics mean to infer that Luther was the only monk, then or now, that felt this call which human nature issues by the ordination of the Creator?  Rome can inflict celibacy even on priests that look like stall-fed oxen, but she cannot unsex men.  Mohammedans are less inhuman to their eunuchs.  Moreover, it must be borne in mind that Luther complains of this matter