Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1507-1521.djvu/308

 that charge. Would to God that in my whole life with all my power I had helped one layman to improve; I would be satisfied with that and thank God and willingly after that would let all my books die. I let others judge whether it is a g^eat art, and profitable to Christianity, to make books wholesale. But I think, if I cared to make big books of their sort, I might, by divine help, do it more quickly than they could make a small sermon of my sort. If success were as easy as failure Christ would long since have been cast again from heaven and God's throne itself turned upside down. If we can't all write poetry, at least we all want to judge it. I am heartily willing to leave others the honor of doing great things, and will not be ashamed myself to preach and write German for the unlearned laity. And, though I have little power in this, yet it seems to me that if we had hitherto ap- plied ourselves to this and would apply ourselves to it hence- forth, it would be more profit and improvement to Christian- ity than all the big books and disputations of the learned in the schools.

Moreover I have never compelled or asked anyone to hear me, or to read my sermons. I have freely served the public with that which God has given me and for which I am re- sponsible; let anyone who does not care for it read and hear others. Also I do not care much whether they need me or not, it is enough and too much for me that some laymen, and fine men, too, humble themselves to read my sermons. And if nothing else impelled me, yet it would be more than enough that I have learned that your Grace likes such German books, and is very anxious for instruction on good works and faith. It became me to do my best to serve such men. Wherefore I humbly pray your Grace kindly to receive this testimony of my good intentions until God gives me the time to write a German exposition of faith.^ Even in the present work I desired to show how we use and need faith in all good works, and consider it the principal work. If God permit, at another

^Claube is the German for both "faith" and "creed." The treatise On Good Works followed the order of the Ten Commandments. It is interesting to see how the exposition of these, with the Creed and the Lord's Prayer, which later became the substance of the Catechism (1529, cf. Smith, a34f.) were thtis early tfie staple of Luther's preaching.

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