“Your book is, in my opinion, so contemptible and worthless that I feel great pity for you for having defiled your beautiful and skilled manner of speaking with such vile dirt….To those who have drunk from the Spirit of the teaching of my books, we have given in abundance and more than enough, and they easily despise your arguments….Hence, you see, I lost all desire to answer you, not because I was busy, or because it would have been a difficult task, nor on account of your great eloquence, nor for fear of you, but simply because of disgust, indignation and contempt, which, if I say so, express my judgment of your diatribe.”
– Luther, responding to Erasmus‘ Freedom of the Will, in his counter-argument, The Bondage of the Will.