While its true Luther added the word "alone" in German, I think its a contextually warranted inference.
Well, the problem is, when we start to modify the text of the Early Church, where do we stop, especially when one doctrine the early church did not teach, Sola Scriptura, that Luther advocated, required unyielding acceptance of his modification of Romans? This really looks bad, in retrospect; if Luther had not taught Sola Scriptura, but instead had stressed something more like the Anglican model of Scripture, Tradition and Reason, or simply had not commented, then one would have no cause to object to this change, or indeed his deprecation of the Antilegomenna, but since he did teach the one, and then effectively modified scripture, basically this had the effect of imposing his doctrine of Sola Fide on the less educated German citizens who could not read or understand Latin; now Martin Luther interestingly continued Latin masses, and they remained a fixture of Lutheran worship well into the 19th century, which is we find five composed by Bach, plus motets, and six composed by Schubert, so educated Lutheran scholars were not impacted by these changes, but this if anything makes the changes he made seem even more vexatious from my perspective, because, combined with his spiteful attitude towards the Anabaptists and others of the Radical Reformation, suggests a condescending attitude towards the unwashed masses, who ironically greatly admired Luther and were his main base of support.
This combined with his “sin boldly” remark, which if interpreted out of context, and his horrible writings about the Jews, prevents me from venerating him, which I would otherwise be inclined to do, based on the horrible abuse of the sale of indulgences and other corruption in the Roman church, which was rectified by Rome in the counter-reformation, and based on Luther’s intense Christological focus, his strong Marian devotion, and his strongly Eucharistic theology, which stressed the real physical presence of Christ in the Eucharist, although I feel in rejecting the complex Scholastic doctrine of transubstantiation he again went too far in introducing the phase “in, with and other,” it would have been better had Luther gone with the pre-Scholastic approach of simply defining the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist as a sacred mystery not requiring further explanation or the use of complex models based on the Aristotelian concept of substance and accidents (which today would be more easily explained using the phrase “perceptual attributes”, since the term accident is now used almost exclusively in English to refer to disasters inadvertently caused, usually by problems with our advanced technology).
So the whole theme with Luther for me is a frustrating “almost, but not quite good enough.” And the thing is, there was a “good enough” at the time in the form of the Eastern church, and second generation Lutheran theologians were surprised when Patriarch Jeremias II of Constantinople disagreed with them, so I can only assume Luther thought he was on the same page as the Patristic church and the Ancient church, which makes his various errors (severe anti-semitism, imposition of doctrinal innovations like Sola Fide based on the doctrinal innovation of Sola Scriptura and alteration of Romans, and the Antilegomenna, misinterpretation of Holy Unction as a curse rather than a blessing, suboptimal Eucharistic theology, Monergistic rejection of the concept of the Eucharist as a rational and bloodless sacrifice based on Roman misinterpretations of Patristic Eucharistic theology, unwarranted rejection of the Eucharistic Prayers of the Roman Canon, the concept of Adiaphora, failure to adhere to religious vows, contemplation of legitimizing polygamy, failure to maintain an Episcopate in the German church, excessively vulgar polemics) that much more frustrating in light of his virtues (sincerity, healthy and correct attitudes towards Confession and partaking of the Eucharist, and the Eucharist itself, good sacramental theology, Marian devotion, Icononodulism, excellent homiletics, focus on preaching Christ crucified, excellent Christological theology with proper stress on the decisions of the Council of Ephesus, and the importance of communicatio idiomatum, and a genuine desire to see an end to the corruption that characterized the Roman church from the century immediately preceding the Great Schism, roughly 950 AD, until the Counter Reformation, and also very importantly, not having anyone burned at the stake).
It is that last virtue which makes me prefer him to Cranmer, narrowly; otherwise I would feel moved by Cranmer’s exquisite liturgical skills to support him, although that discounts the fact that Cranmer’s greatest accomplishment, repopularizing the Divine Office as a public liturgical service, with Morning and Evening Prayer and the Great Litany heavilg attended, was based on reforms to the Roman Breviary proposed by Cardinal Quinones but subsequently rejected by Rome, which has never been unable to repopularize the Office outside of monasteries and cathedral churches, despite many efforts including an excellent reform by Pope Pius X around 1900 and a much less excellent reform and renaming to the Liturgy of the Hours after Vatican II.
So Luther clearly was the best of the well known 16th century reformers, but not as good as his 15th century predecessor St. Jan Hus, who is actually venerated by the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia as a martyr, along with St. Jerome of Prague, nor as good as subsequent Lutheran theologians such as Soren Kierkegaard, or Anglican theologians such as Archbishop Laud, John Wesley and Edward Pusey.
