Page:Luther's correspondence and other contemporary letters 1521-1530.djvu/203

 such fine and pure and good Christians, but were soon led away by deceivers on the erring path of works and were perverted. Beyond all doubt wolves will come among you, too, especially if the good shepherds whom God has now sent you, go away, and they will speak ill of the right way and lead you back again into Egypt, and you will become false worshipers, who serve the devil instead of God. This is the very thing from which Christ, by His heavenly light, has freed you, and is freeing you every day, so that you may come to the knowledge of Him and be sure that He alone is our Lord, priest, teacher, bishop, father, saviour, helper, com- forter and reliance in all sins, in death, in necessity, and in every need, temporal or eternal.

For you have heard and learned that if anyone believes that Jesus Christ, by His blood, without our merit, according to God the Father's will and mercy, has become our Saviour and Bishop of our souls, then this faith, without any works, assuredly makes Christ our own and gives as we believe; for the blood of Christ is certainly not mine nor yours in order that we may fast and say mass, but in order that we may believe, as Paul says,* "We conclude that a man is justified by faith, without the works of the law." This faith gives us a joyful heart, at peace with God, and must make us love Him, because it sees that it is God's will and His kindness to us which causes Christ thus to deal with us. That means that we come to the Father and are drawn to the Father through Christ, and have peace with God, and unconcernedly and gladly await death and all misfortune. Where this faith is not, there is blindness, there are no Christians, nor even a spark of God's works or of His favor.

From this you have gone on and learned that all the doc- trines that have been proposed to us hitherto in order to make us righteous and save us by works, by the laying aside of sin and the doing of penance (such, for example, as the appointed fasts, prayers, pilgrimages, masses, vigils, charitable endow- ments, monkery, nunnery, priestcraft), all such things are devils' doctrine and blasphemy, because they pretend to do for us what only the blood of Christ, through faith, can do.

I Romans iii, aS.

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