A Treatise on Good Works | Page 9

help, do it
more readily perhaps than they could prepare a little discourse after my
fashion. If accomplishment were as easy as persecution, Christ would
long since have been cast out of heaven again, and God's throne itself
overturned. Although we cannot all be writers, we all want to be critics.
I will most gladly leave to any one else the honor of greater things, and
not be at all ashamed to preach and to write in German for the
unlearned laymen. Although I too have little skill in it, I believe that if
we had hitherto done, and should henceforth do more of it,
Christendom would have reaped no small advantage, and have been
more bene fited by this than by the great, deep books and quaestiones,
which are used only in the schools, among the learned.
Then, too, I have never forced or begged any one to hear me, or to read
my sermons. I have freely ministered in the Church of that which God
has given me and which I owe the Church. Whoever likes it not, may
hear and read what others have to say. And if they are not willing to be
my debtors, it matters little. For me it is enough, and even more than
too much, that some laymen condescend to read what I say. Even

though there were nothing else to urge me, it should be more than
sufficient that I have learned that your princely Grace is pleased with
such German books and is eager to receive instruction in Good Works
and the Faith, with which instruction it was my duty, humbly and with
all diligence to serve you.
Therefore, in dutiful humility I pray that your princely Grace may
accept this offering of mine with a gracious mind, until, if God grant
me time, I prepare a German exposition of the Faith in its entirety. For
at this time I have wished to show how in all good works we should
practice and make use of faith, and let faith be the chief work. If God
permit, I will treat at another time of the Faith itself -- how we are daily
to pray or recite it.
I humbly commend myself herewith to your princely Grace, Your
Princely Grace's Humble Chaplain,
DR. MARTIN LUTHER. From Wittenberg, March 29th, A. D. 1520.
THE TREATISE
I. We ought first to know that there are no good works except those
which God has commanded, even as there is no sin except that which
God has forbidden. Therefore whoever wishes to know and to do good
works needs nothing else than to know God's commandments. Thus
Christ says, Matthew xix, "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the
commandments." And when the young man asks Him, Matthew xix,
what he shall do that he may inherit eternal life, Christ sets before him
naught else but the Ten Commandments. Accordingly, we must learn
how to distinguish among good works from the Commandments of
God, and not from the appearance, the magnitude, or the number of the
works themselves, nor from the judgment of men or of human law or
custom, as we see has been done and still is done, because we are blind
and despise the divine Commandments.
II. The first and highest, the most precious of all good works is faith in
Christ, as He says, John vi. When the Jews asked Him: "What shall we
do that we may work the works of God?" He answered: "This is the
work of God, that ye believe on Him Whom He hath sent." When we

hear or preach this word, we hasten over it and deem it a very little
thing and easy to do, whereas we ought here to pause a long time and to
ponder it well. For in this work all good works must be done and
receive from it the inflow of their goodness, like a loan. This we must
put bluntly, that men may understand it.
We find many who pray, fast, establish endowments, do this or that,
lead a good life before men, and yet if you should ask them whether
they are sure that what they do pleases God, they say, "No"; they do not
know, or they doubt. And there are some very learned men, who
mislead them, and say that it is not necessary to be sure of this; and yet,
on the other hand, these same men do nothing else but teach good
works. Now all these works are done outside of faith, therefore they are
nothing and altogether dead. For as their conscience stands toward God
and as it believes, so also are the works which grow out of it. Now they
have no faith, no good conscience toward God, therefore the works lack
their