Sermon: HOW CHRISTIANS SHOULD REGARD MOSES

HOW CHRISTIANS SHOULD REGARD MOSES

Sermon by Martin Luther(1)

August 27, 1525



Dear friends, you have often heard that there has never been a public sermon from heaven except twice. Apart from them God has spoken many times through and with men on earth, as in the case of the holy patriarchs Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and others, down to Moses. But in none of these cases did he speak with such glorious splendor, visible reality, or public cry and exclamation as he did on those two occasions. Rather God illuminated their heart within and spoke through their mouth, as Luke indicates in the first chapter of his gospel where he says, "As he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old" [Luke 1:70].

Now the first sermon is in Exodus 19 and 20; by it God caused himself to be heard from heaven with great splendor and might. For the people of Israel heard the trumpets and the voice of God himself.

In the second place God delivered a public sermon through the Holy Spirit on Pentecost [Acts 2:2-4]. On that occasion the Holy Spirit came with great splendor and visible impressiveness, such that there came from heaven the sudden rushing of a mighty wind, and it filled the entire house where the apostles were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire, distributed and resting on each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to preach and speak in other tongues. This happened with great splendor and glorious might, so that thereafter the apostles preached so powerfully that the sermons which we hear in the world today are hardly a shadow compared to theirs, so far as the visible splendor and substance of their sermons is concerned. For the apostles spoke in all sorts of languages, performed great miracles, etc. Yet through our preachers today the Holy Spirit does not cause himself to be either heard or seen; nothing is coming down openly from heaven. This is why I have said that there are only two such special and public sermons which have been seen and heard from heaven. To be sure, God spoke also to Christ from heaven, when he was baptized in the Jordan [Matt. 3:17], and [at the Transfiguration] on Mount Tabor [Matt. 17:5]. However none of this took place in the presence of the general public.

God wanted to send that second sermon into the world, for it had earlier been announced by the mouth and in the books of the holy prophets. He will no longer speak that way publicly through sermons. Instead, in the third place, he will come in person with divine glory, so that all creatures will tremble and quake before him [Luke 21:25-27]; and then he will no longer preach to them, but they will see and handle him himself [Luke 24:39].

Now the first sermon, and doctrine, is the law of God. The second is the gospel. These two sermons are not the same. Therefore we must have a good grasp of the matter in order to know how to differentiate between them. We must know what the law is, and what the gospel is. The law commands and requires us to do certain things. The law is thus directed solely to our behavior and consists in making requirements. For God speaks through the law, saying, "Do this, avoid that, this is what I expect of you." The gospel, however, does not preach what we are to do or to avoid. It sets up no requirements but reverses the approach of the law, does the very opposite, and says, "This is what God has done for you; he has let his Son be made flesh for you, has let him be put to death for your sake." So, then, there are two kinds of doctrine and two kinds of works, those of God and those of men. Just as we and God are separated from one another, so also these two doctrines are widely separated from one another. For the gospel teaches exclusively what has been given us by God, and not - as in the case of the law - what we are to do and give to God.

We now want to see how this first sermon sounded forth and with what splendor God gave the law on Mount Sinai. He selected the place where he wanted to be seen and heard. Not that God actually spoke, for he has no mouth, tongue, teeth, or lips as we do. But he who created and formed the mouth of all men [Exod. 4:11] can also make speech and the voice. For no one would be able to speak a single word unless God first gave it, as the prophet says, "It would be impossible to speak except God first put it in our mouth" [Num. 22:38]. Language, speech, and voice are thus gifts of God like any other gifts, such as the fruit on the trees. Now he who fashioned the mouth and put speech in it can also make and use speech even though there is no mouth present. Now the words which are here written were spoken through an angel. This is not to say that only one angel was there, for there was a great multitude there serving God and preaching to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai. The angel, however, who spoke here and did the talking, spoke just as if God himself were speaking and saying, "I am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt," etc. [Exod. 20:1], as if Peter or Paul were speaking in God's stead and saying, "I am your God," etc. In his letter to the Galatians [3:19], Paul says that the law was ordained by angels. That is, angels were assigned, in God's behalf, to give the law of God; and Moses, as an intermediary, received it from the angels. I say this so that you might know who gave the law. He did this to them, however, because he wanted thereby to compel, burden, and press the Jews.

What kind of a voice that was, you may well imagine. It was a voice like the voice of a man, such that it was actually heard. The syllables and letters thus made sounds which the physical ear was able to pick up. But it was a bold, glorious, and great voice. As told in Deuteronomy 4:12, the people heard the voice, but saw no one. They heard a powerful voice, for he spoke in a powerful voice, as if in the dark we should hear a voice from a high tower or roof top, and could see no one but only hear the strong voice of a man. And this is why it is called the voice of God, because it was above a human voice.

Now you will hear how God used this voice in order to arouse his people and make them brave. For he intended to institute the tangible and spiritual government. It was previously stated how, on the advice of Jethro, his father-in-law, Moses had established the temporal government and appointed rulers and judges [Exod. 18:13-26]. Beyond that there is yet a spiritual kingdom in which Christ rules in the hearts of men; this kingdom we cannot see, because it consists only in faith and will continue until the Last Day.

These are two kingdoms: the temporal, which governs with the sword and is visible; and the spiritual, which governs solely with grace and with the forgiveness of sins. Between these two kingdoms still another has been placed in the middle, half spiritual and half temporal. It is constituted by the Jews, with commandments and outward ceremonies which prescribe their conduct toward God and men.

The Law of Moses Binds Only the Jews and Not the Gentiles

Here the law of Moses has its place. It is no longer binding on us because it was given only to the people of Israel. And Israel accepted this law for itself and its descendants, while the Gentiles were excluded. To be sure, the Gentiles have certain laws in common with the Jews, such as these: there is one God, no one is to do wrong to another, no one is to commit adultery or murder or steal, and others like them. This is written by nature into their hearts; they did not hear it straight from heaven as the Jews did. This is why this entire text does not pertain to the Gentiles. I say this on account of the enthusiasts. (2) For you see and hear how they read Moses, extol him, and bring up the way he ruled the people with commandments. They try to be clever, and think they know something more than is presented in the gospel; so they minimize faith, contrive something new, and boastfully claim that it comes from the Old Testament. They desire to govern people according to the letter of the law of Moses, as if no one had ever read it before.

But we will not have this sort of thing. We would rather not preach again for the rest of our life than to let Moses return and to let Christ be torn out of our hearts. We will not have Moses as ruler or lawgiver any longer. Indeed God himself will not have it either. Moses was an intermediary solely for the Jewish people. It was to them that he gave the law. We must therefore silence the mouths of those factious spirits who say, "Thus says Moses," etc. Here you simply reply: Moses has nothing to do with us. If I were to accept Moses in one commandment, I would have to accept the entire Moses. Thus the consequence would be that if I accept Moses as master, then I must have myself circumcised, (3) wash my clothes in the Jewish way, eat and drink and dress thus and so, and observe all that stuff. So, then, we will neither observe nor accept Moses. Moses is dead. His rule ended when Christ came. He is of no further service.

That Moses does not bind the Gentiles can be proved from Exodus 20:1, where God himself speaks, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." This text makes it clear that even the Ten Commandments do not pertain to us. For God never led us out of Egypt, but only the Jews. The sectarian spirits want to saddle us with Moses and all the commandments. We will just skip that. We will regard Moses as a teacher, but we will not regard him as our lawgiver - unless he agrees with both the New Testament and the natural law. Therefore it is clear enough that Moses is the lawgiver of the Jews and not of the Gentiles. He has given the Jews a sign whereby they should lay hold of God, when they call upon him as the God who brought them out of Egypt. The Christians have a different sign, whereby they conceive of God as the One who gave his Son, etc.

Again one can prove it from the third commandment (4) that Moses does not pertain to Gentiles and Christians. For Paul [Col. 2:16] and the New Testament [Matt. 12:1-12; John 5:16; 7:22-23; 9:14-16] abolish the sabbath, to show us that the sabbath was given to the Jews alone, for whom it is a stern commandment. The prophets referred to it too, that the sabbath of the Jews would be abolished. For Isaiah says in the last chapter, "When the Savior comes, then such will be the time, one sabbath after the other, one month after the other," etc. [Isa. 66:23]. This is as though he were trying to say, "It will be the sabbath every day, and the people will be such that they make no distinction between days. For in the New Testament the sabbath is annihilated as regards the crude external observance, for every day is a holy day," etc.

Now if anyone confronts you with Moses and his commandments, and wants to compel you to keep them, simply answer, "Go to the Jews with your Moses; I am no Jew. Do not entangle me with Moses. If I accept Moses in one respect [Paul tells the Galatians in chapter 5:3], then I am obligated to keep the entire law." For not one little period in Moses pertains to us.

Question: Why then do you preach about Moses if he does not pertain to us?

Answer to the Question: Three things are to be noted in Moses.

I want to keep Moses and not sweep him under the rug, because I find three things in Moses.

In the first place I dismiss the commandments given to the people of Israel. They neither urge nor compel me. They are dead and gone, except insofar as I gladly and willingly accept something from Moses, as if I said, "This is how Moses ruled, and it seems fine to me, so I will follow him in this or that particular." (5)

I would even be glad if [today's] lords ruled according to the example of Moses. If I were emperor, I would take from Moses a model for [my] statutes; not that Moses should be binding on me, but that I should be free to follow him in ruling as he ruled. For example, tithing is a very fine rule, because with the giving of the tenth all other taxes would be eliminated. For the ordinary man it would also be easier to give a tenth than to pay rents and fees. Suppose I had ten cows; I would then give one. If I had only five, I would give nothing. If my fields were yielding only a little, I would give proportionately little; if much, I would give much. All of this would be in God's providence. But as things are now, I must pay the Gentile tax even if the hail should ruin my entire crop. If I owe a hundred gulden in taxes, I must pay it even though there may be nothing growing in the field. This is also the way the pope decrees and governs. But it would be better if things were so arranged that when I raise much, I give much; and when little, I give little.

Again in Moses it is also stipulated that no man should sell his field into a perpetual estate, but only up to the jubilee year [Lev. 25:8-55]. When that year came, every man returned to the field or possessions which he had sold. In this way the possessions remained in the family relationship. There are also other extraordinarily fine roles in Moses which one should like to accept, use, and put into effect. Not that one should bind or be bound by them, but (as I said earlier) the emperor could here take an example for setting up a good government on the basis of Moses, just as the Romans conducted a good government, and just like the Sachsenspiegel (6) by which affairs are ordered in this land of ours. The Gentiles are not obligated to obey Moses. Moses is the Sachsenspiegel for the Jews. But if an example of good government were to be taken from Moses, one could adhere to it without obligation as long as one pleased, etc.

Again Moses says, "If a man dies without children, then his brother or closest relative should take the widow into his home and have her to wife, and thus raise up offspring for the deceased brother or relative. The first child thus born was credited to the deceased brother or relative" [Deut. 25:5-6]. So it came about that one man had many wives. Now this is also a very good rule.

When these factious spirits come, however, and say, "Moses has commanded it," then simply drop Moses and reply, "I am not concerned about what Moses commands." "Yes," they say, "he has commanded that we should have one God, that we should trust and believe in him, that we should not swear by his name; that we should honor father and mother; not kill, steal, commit adultery; not bear false witness, and not covet [Exod. 20:3-17]; should we not keep these commandments?" You reply: Nature also has these laws. Nature provides that we should call upon God. The Gentiles attest to this fact. For there never was a Gentile who did not call upon his idols, even though these were not the true God. This also happened among the Jews, for they had their idols as did the Gentiles; only the Jews have received the law. The Gentiles have it written in their heart, and there is no distinction [Rom. 3:22]. As St. Paul also shows in Romans 2:14-15, the Gentiles, who have no law, have the law written in their heart.

But just as the Jews fail, so also do the Gentiles. Therefore it is natural to honor God, not steal, not commit adultery, not bear false witness, not murder; and what Moses commands is nothing new. For what God has given the Jews from heaven, he has also written in the hearts of all men. Thus I keep the commandments which Moses has given, not because Moses gave the commandment, but because they have been implanted in me by nature, and Moses agrees exactly with nature, etc.

But the other commandments of Moses, which are not [implanted in all men] by nature, the Gentiles do not hold. Nor do these pertain to the Gentiles, such as the tithe and others equally fine which I wish we had too. Now this is the first thing that I ought to see in Moses, namely, the commandments to which I am not bound except insofar as they are [implanted in everyone] by nature [and written in everyone's heart].

The second thing to notice in Moses

In the second place I find something in Moses that I do not have from nature: the promises and pledges of God about Christ. (7)

This is the best thing. It is something that is not written naturally into the heart, but comes from heaven. God has promised, for example, that his Son should be born in the flesh. This is what the gospel proclaims. It is not commandments. And it is the most important thing in Moses which pertains to us. The first thing, namely, the commandments, does not pertain to us. I read Moses because such excellent and comforting promises are there recorded, by which I can find strength for my weak faith. For things take place in the kingdom of Christ just as I read in Moses that they will; therein I find also my sure foundation.

In this manner, therefore, I should accept Moses, and not sweep him under the rug: first because he provides fine examples of laws, from which excerpts may be taken. Second, in Moses there are the promises of God which sustain faith. As it is written of Eve in Genesis 3:15, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head," etc. Again Abraham was given this promise by God, speaking thus in Genesis 22:18, "In your descendants shall all the nations be blessed"; that is, through Christ the gospel is to arise.

Again in Deuteronomy 18:15-16 Moses says, "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brethren-him you shall heed; just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly," etc. Many are these texts in the Old Testament, which the holy apostles quoted and drew upon.

But our factious spirits go ahead and say of everything they find in Moses, "Here God is speaking, no one can deny it; therefore we must keep it." So then the rabble go to it. Whew! If God has said it, who then will say anything against it? Then they are really pressed hard like pigs at a trough. Our dear prophets have chattered thus into the minds of the people, "Dear people, God has ordered his people to beat Amalek to death" [Exod. 17:8-16; Deut. 25:17-19]. (8) Misery and tribulation have come out of this sort of thing. The peasants have arisen, not knowing the difference, and have been led into this error by those insane factious spirits.

Had there been educated preachers around, they could have stood up to the false prophets and stopped them, and said this to them, "Dear factious spirits, it is true that God commanded this of Moses and spoke thus to the people; but we are not this people. Land, God spoke also to Adam; but that does not make me Adam, God commanded Abraham to put his son to death [Gen. 22:2]; but that does not make me Abraham and obligate me to put my son to death. God spoke also with David. It is all God's word. But let God's word be what it may, I must pay attention and know to whom God's word is addressed. You are still a long way from being the people with whom God spoke." The false prophets say, "You are that people, God is speaking to you." You must prove that to me. With talk like that these factious spirits could have been refuted. But they wanted to be beaten, and so the rabble went to the devil.

One must deal cleanly with the Scriptures. From the very beginning the word has come to us in various ways. It is not enough simply to look and see whether this is God's word, whether God has said it; rather we must look and see to whom it has been spoken, whether it fits us. That makes all the difference between night and day. God said to David, "Out of you shall come the king," etc. [II Sam, 7:13]. But this does not pertain to me, nor has it been spoken to me. He can indeed speak to me if he chooses to do so. You must keep your eye on the word that applies to you, that is spoken to you.

The word in Scripture is of two kinds: the first does not pertain or apply to me, the other kind does. And upon that word which does pertain to me I can boldly trust and rely, as upon a strong rock. But if it does not pertain to me, then I should stand still. The false prophets pitch in and say, "Dear people, this is the word of God," That is true; we cannot deny it. But we are not the people. God has not given us the directive. The factious spirits came in and wanted to stir up something new, saying, "We must keep the Old Testament also..' So they led the peasants into a sweat and ruined them in wife and child. These insane people imagined that it had been withheld from them, that no one had told them they are supposed to murder. It serves them right. They would not follow or listen to anybody. I have seen and experienced it myself, how mad, raving, and senseless they were.

Therefore tell this to Moses: Leave Moses and his people together; they have had their day and do not pertain to me. I listen to that word which applies to me. We have the gospel. Christ says, "Go and preach the gospel," not only to the Jews as Moses did, but to "all nations," to "all creatures" [Mark 16:15]. To me it is said, "He who believes and is baptized will be saved" [Mark 16:16]. Again, "Go and do to your neighbor as has been done to you" [cf. Matt. 7:12]. These words strike me too, for I am one of the "all creatures." If Christ had not added, "preach to all creatures," then I would not listen, would not be baptized, just as I now will not listen to Moses because he is given not to me but only to the Jews. However because Christ says: not to one people, nor in this or in that place in the world, but to "all creatures," therefore no one is exempt. Rather all are thereby included; no one should doubt that to him too the gospel is to be preached. And so I believe that word; it does pertain also to me. I too belong under the gospel, in the new covenant. Therefore I put my trust in that word, even if it should cost a hundred thousand lives.

This distinction should be noticed, grasped, and taken to heart by those preachers who would teach others; indeed by all Christians, for everything depends entirely upon it. If the peasants had understood it this way, they would have salvaged much and would not have been so pitifully misled and ruined. And where we understand it differently, there we make sects and factions, slavering among the rabble and into the raving and uncomprehending people without any distinction, saying, "God's word, God's word." But my dear fellow, the question is whether it was said to you. God indeed speaks also to angels, wood, fish, birds, animals, and all creatures, but this does not make it pertain to me. I should pay attention to that which applies to me, that which is said to me, in which God admonishes, drives, and requires something of me.

Here is an illustration. Suppose a housefather had a wife, a daughter, a son, a maid, and a hired man. Now he speaks to the hired man and orders him to hitch up the horses and bring in a load of wood, or drive over to the field, or do some other job. And suppose he tells the maid to milk the cows, churn some butter, and so on. And suppose he tells his wife to take care of the kitchen and his daughter to do some spinning and make the beds. All this would be the words of one master, one housefather. Suppose now the maid decided she wanted to drive the horses and fetch the wood, the hired man sat down and began milking the cows, the daughter wanted to drive the wagon or plow the field, the wife took a notion to make the beds or spin and so forgot all about the kitchen; and then they all said, "The master has commanded this, these are the housefather's orders!" Then what? Then the housefather would grab a club and knock them all in a heap, and say, "Although it is my command, yet I have not commanded it of you; I gave each of you your instructions, you should have stuck to them."

It is like this with the word of God. Suppose I take up something that God ordered someone else to do, and then I declare, "But you said to do it." God would answer, "Let the devil thank you; I did not tell you to do it." One must distinguish well whether the word pertains to only one or to everybody. If, now, the housefather should say, "On Friday we are going to eat meat," this would be a word common to everybody in the house. Thus what God said to Moses by way of commandment is for the Jews only. But the gospel goes through the whole world in its entirety; it is offered to all creatures without exception. Therefore all the world should accept it, and accept it as if it had been offered to each person individually. The word, "We should love one another" [John 15:12], pertains to me, for it pertains to all who belong to the gospel. Thus we read Moses not because he applies to us, that we must obey him, but because he agrees with the natural law and is conceived better than the Gentiles would ever have been able to do. Thus the Ten Commandments are a mirror of our life, in which we can see wherein we are lacking, etc. The sectarian spirits have misunderstood also with respect to the images; for that too pertains only to the Jews.


Summing up this second part, we read Moses for the sake of the promises about Christ, who belongs not only to the Jews but also to the Gentiles; for through Christ all the Gentiles should have the blessing, as was promised to Abraham [Gen. 12:3].

The third thing to be seen in Moses

In the third place we read Moses for the beautiful examples of faith, of love, and of the cross, as shown in the fathers, Adam, Abel, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and all the rest. (9) From them we should learn to trust in God and love him. In turn there are also examples of the godless, how God does not pardon the unfaith of the unbelieving; how he can punish Cain, Ishmael, Esau, the whole world in the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc. Examples like these are necessary. For although I am not Cain, yet if I should act like Cain, I will receive the same punishment as Cain. Nowhere else do we find such fine examples of both faith and unfaith. Therefore we should not sweep Moses under the rug. Moreover the Old Testament is thus properly understood when we retain from the prophets the beautiful texts about Christ, when we take note of and thoroughly grasp the fine examples, and when we use the laws as we please to our advantage.

Conclusion and Summary

I have stated that all Christians, and especially those who handle the word of God and attempt to teach others, should take heed and learn Moses aright. Thus where he gives the commandments, we are not to follow him except so far as he agrees with the natural law. Moses is a teacher and doctor of the Jews. We have our own master, Christ, and he has set before us what we are to know, observe, do, and leave undone. However it is true that Moses sets down, in addition to the laws, fine examples of faith and unfaith - punishment of the godless, elevation of the righteous and believing - and also the dear and comforting promises concerning Christ which we should accept. The same is true also in the gospel. For example in the account of the ten lepers, that Christ bids them go to the priest and make sacrifice [Luke 17:14] does not pertain to me. The example of their faith, however, does pertain to me; I should believe Christ, as did they.

Enough has now been said of this, and it is to be noted well for it is really crucial. Many great and outstanding people have missed it, while even today many great preachers still stumble over it. They do not know how to preach Moses, nor how properly to regard his books. They are absurd as they rage and fume, chattering to people, "God's word, God's word!" All the while they mislead the poor people and drive them to destruction. Many learned men have not known how far Moses ought to be taught. Origen, Jerome, and others like them, have not shown clearly how far Moses can really serve us. This is what I have attempted, to say in an introduction to Moses how we should regard him, and how he should be understood and received and not simply be swept under the rug. For in Moses there is comprehended such a fine order, that it is a joy, etc.

God be praised.



(1) Martin Luther, "How Christians Should Regard Moses," trans. and ed. by E. Theodore Bachmann, Luther's Works: Word and Sacrament I, vol. 35 (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1960), 161-174. This sermon was delivered on August 27, 1525 in Luther's long series of seventy-seven sermons on Exodus preached from October 2, 1524 to February 2, 1527.



(2) The "enthusiasts" were the Anabaptists or radical reformers (the left wing extreme of the reformation) like Thomas Munzer, who Luther also refers to as "factitious or sectarian spirits" and "false prophets." These radicals should be distinguished from the magisterial reformers like Luther and Calvin. They were known for their millennialism (chiliasm; apocalyptic fanaticism), which led to their insistence of violent measures to bring about a more radical reformation. They were also known as "spiritualists" because they purported to receive direct revelations from the Holy Spirit who was leading them to stir up the masses (peasants) to use all means necessary, even violent rebellion and revolution against authorities, to bring in the new age. Luther was afraid that such preaching would bring massive anarchy throughout the land. Further, they argued that the social laws of the land ought to be replaced by judicial laws of the Mosaic covenant. "Pastor Jacob Strauss at Eisenach and the court preacher Wolfgang Stein at Weimar had brought their considerable influence to bear on the Saxon princes in favor of substituting the more humane laws of the Old Testament for the then current imperial and canon laws. Luther opposed the notion that the Scriptures would be properly exalted if Mosaic precepts were suddenly, as law, to replace laws of the German state and church. He warned that while seemingly honoring the Scriptures, one can actually distort the meaning and intention of the Word of God . . . 'Moses' is not the Word of God in the sense that 'Moses' could be substituted for a piece of human legislation . . . Anyone who, like the enthusiasts, erects Mosaic law as a biblical-divine requirement does injury to the preaching of Christ. Just as the Judaizers of old, who would have required circumcision as an initial requirement, so also the enthusiasts and radicals of this later era do not see that Christ is the end of the Mosaic law. For all the stipulations of that law, insofar as they go beyond the natural law, have been abolished by Christ. The Ten Commandments are binding upon all men only so far as they are implanted in everyone by nature. In this sense Luther declares that 'Moses is dead' . . . Besides, the Jewish assembly of Sinai and of the decalogue has been replaced by the Christian congregation of Pentecost and of the new covenant. The era of Mosaic law extends from Sinai to Pentecost. In this era the Jewish people served its particular purpose, for this people, alone among all the peoples, was during that time span both state and church. It was just one national ethnic group among others on earth, but at the same time it was peculiar people set apart for God as an instrument of his plan for all peoples. So far as 'Moses' is simply the Sachsenspiegel or law code of the Jewish people as a national ethnic group, it can be listed as just one code of laws among many, features of which may or may not be considered desirable in another age or nation. But so far as the Mosaic law is the law of the Old Testament congregation of God, it has a prophetic and promissory significance comparable to nothing in the laws of other peoples; and it has a continuing relevance not to any people simply as people but only to the post-Pentecost church of God spread among all peoples (from introduction to sermon, pp. 157-159; written by E. Theodore Bachman). This imposition of the Mosaic law upon the state sounds very similar to the modern error of theonomy or Christian reconstruction.



(3) In a letter to Chancellor Bruck of Saxony dated January 13, 1524, Luther wrote that the people of Orlamunde, Karlstadt's parish, would probably circumcise themselves and be wholly Mosaic.



(4) The reformers numbered the commandments differently. Calvin referred to this as the fourth commandment (Inst. 2.8.28).



(5) This is what Luther and Calvin would refer to as the "natural law." Calvin referred to these laws as the "equity" of the Mosaic law (Inst. 4.20.16). Both Calvin and Luther agreed that anything in the Mosaic law that was not "general," "common," or "equitable" to all nations no longer applied to the state, seeing that those specific laws were applicable only to Israel. Calvin argued, "I would have preferred to pass over this matter in utter silence if I were not aware that here many dangerously go astray. For there are some who deny that a commonwealth is duly framed which neglects the political system of Moses, and is ruled by the common laws of nations. Let other men consider how perilous and seditious this notion is; it will be enough for me to have proved it false and foolish . . . It is a fact that the law of God which we call the moral law is nothing else than a testimony of natural law and of that conscience which God has engraved upon the minds of men. Consequently, the entire scheme of this equity of which we are now speaking has been prescribed in it. Hence, this equity alone must be the goal and rule and limit of all laws. Whatever laws shall be framed to that rule, directed to that goal, bound by that limit, there is no reason why we should disapprove of them, howsoever they may differ from the Jewish law, or among themselves . . . For the statement of some, that the law of God given through Moses is dishonored when it is abrogated and new laws preferred to it, is utterly vain. For others are not preferred to it when they are more approved, not by a simple comparison, but with regard to the condition of times, place, and nation; or when that law is abrogated which was never enacted for us. For the Lord through the hand of Moses did not give that law to be proclaimed among all nations and to be in force everywhere; but when he had taken the Jewish nation into his safekeeping, defense, and protection, he also willed to be a lawgiver especially to it; and -- as became a wise lawgiver -- he had special concern for it in making its laws (Inst. 4.20.14, 16; also see Calvin's comments on Rom. 1:21-27 and 2:14-15).



(6) This "Saxon code of law" was a thirteenth century compilation of the economic and social laws obtaining in and around Magdeburg and Halberstadt; it was influential in the codification of German law until the nineteenth century. The radical Reformers sometimes sought to replace it with the law of Moses or the Sermon on the Mount.



(7) Here Luther refers to gospel given progressively in types and shadows throughout the Old Testament and looking forward to fulfillment in Jesus Christ.



(8) Thomas Munzer in a sermon of July, 1524, at Allstedt demanded that the princes wipe out all the godless, including godless rulers, princes, and monks.



(9) Here Luther argues that we can find many moral illustrations of good and bad behavior throughout the Old Testament.

LUTHER AND HIS LATEST CRITIC

Source: The American journal of theology By University of Chicago. Divinity School Published by University of Chicago Press, 1905 Item notes: v. 9

It is paradoxical to say that Luther has been a blessing and a curse to the Catholic church, yet it is true. Though he broke forever her dominance over a large part of Germany, though he wrought her irreparable injury, though no one fought her more bitterly, more manfully, more powerfully than he—for which reason he is more intensely hated than any other man by Catholics, so intensely hated that it is a question whether many of them hate Luther or the devil more—yet it is true that he did her great service. I do not mean in the general results of the Reformation, which reacted in all lands to the purification of the Catholic church; but I mean that Luther by his limitations, his extravagances, his coarseness, his errors in conduct, in speech, or in writing, has furnished such a handle to criticism that he has been a valuable asset to the Catholic church. She has won many a victory exploiting his failures; her best weapons she has forged out of his writings, and when she wants to win converts or keep her own faithful, she gives them a dose of Luther. In fact, she has made the failures of the Reformers, and especially of Luther, a kind of Catholic apologetic which she has wielded with tremendous, popular effect. This is her syllogism: If God, were to reform his church he would choose good, pious men to do it. The Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century, and especially Luther, were not such men. Therefore God did not choose them to reform his church. They were not sent by him.

When I was a theological student, and later, I read a good deal of Catholic literature, and that was the burden of their song. Of course, I would deny both the major and minor members of that syllogism in the sense in which the Catholics use them. God uses the best men available for his work, whether or not they come up to his ideal of piety or to ours. Henry VIII, for instance, wrought a work of incalculable value to the church and state of England in reference to Rome, and yet he was one of the most cruel, most tyrannical and unscrupulous, of all English sovereigns. In fact, it is sometimes those very qualities, the excess of which makes one a bad man, which enable God to use a man for his purpose. I would, also deny the minor member of the Catholic syllogism. The Protestant Reformers of the sixteenth century, on the whole, were good men and pious, who feared God and loved the truth. They had their failings; they made their mistakes both in doctrine and practice; but, on the whole, they were men who were worthy of their call. One need not agree with Renan when he calls Calvin "the most Christian man of his age,"1 to recognize in what light the Reformers may appear under impartial judgment.

1 Studies in Religious History, p. 83.

I said the Catholics have not been slow to exploit Luther. Let me give two or three instances. As giving a due to the method followed with so much success by later writers—that is, taking extracts from Luther's own writings—may be mentioned the convert John Pistorius, Anatomiae Lutheri pars prima; that is, out oj the seven bad spirits of many lost souls, the first three spirits: the fleshly spirit, the blaspheming spirit, and the lazy spirit. Also four other spirits which Luther paints in his own words, by which one can infallibly conceive and trace whether he is a prophet of God, etc. (Cologne, 1595; in German). The latest successor of Pistorius calls him the "celebrated Pistorius," the "feared, unconquerable opponent of Protestant pastors and theologians."2 The polemic of the sixteenth century reached its culmination in the Jesuit Conrad Vetter (died 1622), who wrote one hundred controversial tracts and books, mostly against Luther and the Protestants.3 In order to awaken more credibility among the latter, he wrote under the name of "Conrad Andrea, natural brother to Jacob Andrea of blessed memory," this lie on the title-page being a good introduction to the abusive and unscrupulous methods of his pen in the body of his books.4 A perfect thesaurus for later attacks is the slander-book of J. R. Weislinger, Friss Vogel oder stirb (1722; many later editions). Eusebius Englehard came as a good second in his book, with its engaging title: Lucifer Witten- bergensis, or the Morning Star of Wittenberg; that is the complete life of Catherine von Bora, the presumed wife of Dr. Martin Luther, composed mostly out of the books of Luther, out of his dirty tabletalk, spirited epistles, and other rare documents, in which all her apparent virtues, invented achievements, false appearances, and miserable wonderworks, by the side of the whole canonization process, are related by her husband during her lifetime (2 vols.; Landtsberg, 1747; 2d ed., 1749; German).

The nineteenth century brought a more worthy tone, which was particularly shown in Mohler's Symbolik (1832; 9th ed., 1884; translated into French, Italian, and English). Johann Adam Mohler was a brilliant professor of church history, first at Tubingen and then at Munich, who died at the early age of forty-two. He was almost the first Catholic to treat Protestantism with anything approaching a scientific spirit, and his work was received with acclaim by both parties. Of course, in real objectivity and adequacy of representation there are serious lapses in Mohler's book, but it was such an advance on anything that had gone before that it marks

1 Denifle, as below, pp. 302, 697.

3 Sommervogel, Bibliolheque de la Compagnie de Jesu, 2d ed., Vol. VIII, p. 617.

4 For him and others see Kolde, P. Denifle: Seine Beschimpfung Lvlhers und der evangelischen Kirche (Leipzig, 1904), pp. 10 ff.

a new era, and German Roman Catholic historians, like Alzog, Funk, and Kraus, have been true to his spirit, and have never descended to the depths of their predecessors. Something of the old method, however, came back in 1846, when Dollinger, the successor and friend of Mohler at Munich, wrote his two-volume History oj the Reformation, and followed it in 1851 by his Lutherskizze. Dollinger brought back the old Pistorian method— of course, scientifically brushed up—of using the writings of Luther and the other reformers and their contemporaries as witnesses to discredit them and their movement. His two books have done fine service for Roman Catholic controversialists, but are without scientific value, because they do not estimate the scope, the meaning, the connection, of the passages quoted, nor the historical or theological considerations behind them, but are simply collected and placed so as to put Luther and the Reformation in the worst possible light. The Erlangen professor, Johann Christian Hofmann, saw this weakness in Dollinger's work, and showed what the same method would do with Paul.5

A true successor of Dollinger in his method of treating Luther and the Reformation was Johannes Janssen, a Roman Catholic layman, who wrote a Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit dem Ausgange des Mittelallers (6 vols., 1876-88; i4th ed., 1887), a masterful work, written with great skill and power, but with such a use of his sources as to give a distorted and at times false picture of Luther and the Reformation. The Reformation was an apostasy, an immoral revolution which brought the downfall of the nation. This was followed by books in the fourth centenary of Luther's birth, 1883, the chief on the Catholic side being Evers—formerly a Lutheran pastor (6 vols., 1883 f.). These Ultramontane distortions reached a fitting climax in P. Majunke's Luthers Lebensende (1890), in which he tried to prove that Luther committed suicide. To the credit of the Catholics, however, be it said that in 1896 and 1898, in two pamphlets, Dr. Nic. Paulus gave a final quietus to the suicide myth. Since that time no important work on Luther has come out on the Catholic side until 1904, when Father Heinrich Denifle, O.P., published his massive Luther und Lutherthum in der ersten Entwicklung (Mainz, Vol. I, 860 pages).

This Dominican friar has been well and widely known for his works in church history, especially for his books in mediaeval history, as that is the period he has most cultivated. With Ehrle he edited the Archiv jtir Litera- tur und Kirchengeschichie des Mittelalters (1885-93) > wrote three or four

s Paulus: Eine DSttingersche Skizze, id ed. by Kolde, 1890. In his Luther in rationalistischer und christlicher Belcuchtung (Mainz, 1904), p. 65, DeniSe calls Hofmann's pamphlet "miserable rubbish" (elenden Quark).

books on the mystics of that time; a great book, Die UniversiUUen des Mitlelalters bis 1400 (2 vols., 1885 ff.), which, however, shows a caustic controversial temper; edited the chartularies of the University of Paris (4 vols., 1889-97); wrote a book in French on the desolations of the church and monasteries in France about the middle of the fifteenth century (1897); and was selected by Pope Leo XIII as one of the editors of the definitive edition of the works of his favorite St. Thomas of Aquinas (1883 ff.). So that when his book on Luther appeared, Protestant scholars greeted it with high expectation, thinking that here at last was a scientific work on Luther from a Catholic pen—a pen guided by love of truth and by a hand trained in historical investigation, whose previous products in mediaeval historical research had been thankfully received, utilized, and praised by Protestant students.

What was their surprise, however, to find that we have to do with a book written in the bitterest spirit of the controversialist, a huge propagandist pamphlet, inspired, as he says in the preface, by the Los-von-Rom movement in Austria, full of the harshest judgments of Luther's person and writings, attributing to him all kinds of wickedness, making him a monster the like of which has hardly been known in the history of the world, distorting and misrepresenting all that he said and did, putting the worst construction on everything, and thus presenting a huge impeachment in the style of a prosecuting attorney. It is impossible, of course, that Denifle's learning in mediaeval literature, especially in Aquinas, should not make that part of his book where he criticises Luther's use of the mediaeval writers and Luther's representation of mediaeval teaching of independent value, and here and there, besides, he gives welcome information; but, so far as contributing to the understanding of Luther, or to an exact estimate of his character, work, and influence, is concerned, the black and bitter hate which pervades it, its fierceness of objurgation, its wealth of contumely, deprive it of any value. After reading, one is forced to the conclusion, not that Denifle has purposely misrepresented Luther, but that his hate makes him blind and drives him to the result we have before us. It seems morally impossible for a Catholic, much less a Catholic priest, still less a Catholic monk, to understand Luther and the Reformation. From the start their whole intellectual and spiritual vision is so prejudiced that they cannot see things as they are; everything is yellow with the jaundice of their hate. That seems to be the charitable view of their Luther work.

On the contrary, Protestants have given us admirable and most appreciative studies in Catholic history. Neander's Church History is so impartial that it might be used as a textbook in a Catholic seminary. One of the most enthusiastic books we have on a Catholic saint is our own Dr. Storr's Bernhard of Clairvaux (1893)—a book that errs, if anywhere, on the better side. When Paul Sabatier's book on St. Francis of Assisi came out in 1894, the pope was so pleased with it that he was on the point of sending, or actually did send, a letter of thanks to the author, the book showing such an inner and tender appreciation of the Christlikeness of its subject. In fact, we have a series of books on St. Francis, or editions of his writings, by Protestants that almost any learned Catholic might have written. No Catholic could be more appreciative of the moral heroism of Savonarola, or could write more impartially about him, than does Villari, who has given us his best life, translated into most of the languages of Europe. Will there ever be a Catholic Villari of Wesley ? John Henry Newman was about the only Catholic who had a good word to say of the great evangelical leaders of England, and the centenary of Wesley's death has called out hardly a single appreciation by a Catholic hand of his immense significance in the moral progress of the race. The fact that he did not favor Catholic emancipation in Ireland, and did not denounce the Gordon riots of 1780, is so set against him that his whole life of beneficent activity goes for nothing.

Let us now take some of the points alleged by Denifle against Luther and see what can be said concerning them.

Denifle rejects in tola the whole religious development of Luther as understood by Protestants for three hundred years. This development centered around a struggle for religious peace and certainty, carried on especially in his cloister days. This certainty he could not find in obedience to the instructions of his church, but he finally found it partly through the teachings of Staupitz, partly through his study of Paul, especially the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians, in faith in Jesus Christ. Resting on him alone he found peace of conscience and certainty of salvation. He could not see the full implication of this at first, nor work himself clear from many Catholic views—he never worked himself clear from all of them; but through various external and internal impulses—notably, of course, the indulgence crusade of Tetzel—he was led to make his protest, and finally was excommunicated by the papal bull of 1520. Now, this has been the common understanding of Luther's development, based upon various hints here and there in his writings. Denifle says all this is fiction; that he never had any struggles in his days as a monk; that he never had any difficulty with Catholic teaching of which he became cured by his so-called faith; that this faith was a pure makeshift, a manufactured confidence, something invented to ease his conscience and cover his scruples so that he could sin the more readily. Denifle says the only trouble with Luther was his lust, his sin, and that to be free to sin, to be free to indulge his passions, he broke from the church, he repudiated his vows as a monk, he made up this doctrine of salvation by faith, which was not salvation from sin, but rest in sin; that it represented no inner cleansing, but an artificial covering of a life to be given over to indulgence—indulgence not only in the so-called small sins, but in gross transgressions. This is Denifle's philosophy of Luther's life. This is his portentous reconstruction of Reformation history.

I merely throw out, in passing, the question whether this tallies with the history of the world as we know it ? Can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit? Can the moral revolution which sprang from Luther; which sent tides of new intellectual and religious life eventually to all shores; which was the origin of the Reformation in England so far as it was Protestant—for Professor Jacobs has shown that all the positive evangelical elements in the Anglican confessions came from the Lutheran creeds;6 which helped to create Puritanism and nurtured Methodism, the two most powerful forces for moral regeneration and perfection in modern history—for in those doctrines of sin, and justification by faith alone, which Denifle imputes to Luther, the Reformed churches stood on the same platform with him, and Methodism sprang full-grown from his preface to the Epistle to the Romans; I say, can this moral revolution have sprung from a degenerate and a scoundrel, from a worthless, lustful drunkard and poltroon ?

I want now to test this account of Luther's development from his own words, and then ask: Was his docrtine of justification a cloak for sin?

As early as April 8, 1516, in his letter to a brother Augustinian, Spenlein, he shows himself working toward another conception of justification. He asks him whether he has not grown weary of his own righteousness, and does not wish to learn to confide in and aspire after the righteousness of Christ, that righteousness of God which is freely and fully given to us in Christ. "I once stuck in this error myself, but I have fought against it, though I have not yet perfectly overcome it."' Here we read of a struggle going on in Luther after what he considered an evangelical basis of confidence. This was in 1516. Denifle says these struggles are an invention of Luther in his later life.

In his explanation of Psalm 51, written in Latin in 1532, he speaks

6 See his Lutheran Movement in England (Philadelphia, 1890; rev. ed. 1894). i Enders, Briefwechsel Lathers, Vol. I, pp. 28 ff. See Kaweran, in Theologiscke Studien und Kritiken, 1904, No. 4, p. 615, to whom I am indebted for the quotations. thus of the words, "My tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness":

The word "justice" has cost me much sweat. For they readily explain it; justice is the truth whereby God for cause condemns or judges badly those who merit it, and they oppose the mercy of justice by which believers are saved. This exposition is very dangerous, besides that it is vain, because it stirs up secret hatred against God and his justice. For who can love him—those who are against his justice are willing to carry on their sins? Wherefore remember that the justice of God is that by which we are justified or receive the remission of sins.8

In a "Table Talk" given in Lauterbach's Tagebuch from Kummer's Tischredenhandschrijt we read:

These words Justus and justilia Dei were to me a thunderbolt in the conscience, anon I am filled with fear. Just, therefore he punishes. But once in that tower in the Augustinian cloister in Wittenberg, I am thinking of these words: "The just shall live by faith by the justice of God;" then I think: if we just live by faith, and if the justice of God is for the salvation of all believing— anon my soul is lifted up. Therefore the justice of God is that by which we are justified and saved. These words are most pleasant to me."9

In a "Table Talk" of September 12, 1538, we read:

That word justilia was in my heart like a thunderclap. For while in the papacy I used to read, "In justice thou shalt free me" (Psalm 31:2 Vulg.), that is, in thy truth, soon I am thinking of that justice vindicating its fury, that is, of the divine wrath. I was in my heart an enemy to Paul where I read: "The justice of God is revealed by the gospel." But afterward when I came to see that the Scripture says that the just shall live by his faith, and, moreover, could consult Augustine, then I was joyful; where I perceived the justice of God as mercy regarding the just, there the remedy touched my affliction.10

More distinctly still he says in a "Table Talk" of the winter of 1542-43, where he remarks on Rom. 1:16, 17:

This was always sticking in my mind. I could not understand this word justitia Dei, in any other way than that he was just and would judge justly. I was urging this with myself; I was standing and beating about if peradventure there might be someone who might explain it, and there was no one. I knew nothing of what it meant until, going on, I read: "The just shall live by his faith." That sentence is the exposition of this justice of God. When I found this, I was so pleased, in such great joy, that nothing could be more so. And thus it appeared clear where I read in the Psalms, "In thy justice make me free," that is, "In thy mercy free me." Before that I was in terror, and I hated the Psalms and the Scriptures where the justice of God was mentioned; that is, that by which he became just and judged according to our sins, not that by which he accepted us and made us just. All Scripture stood thus as a wall until reading I learned, "The just shall live by his faith." From this I have learned that the justice of God is faith in the mercy of God by which he justifies us freely by his grace."11

8 Opera exegetica, Vol. XIX, p. 130.

9 Lauterbach, Tagebuch, p. 81, note.

10 Ibid., p. 130; Forstemann-Bindseil, Tischreden, Vol. II, pp. 143, 170; Bindseil,

Colinquiil. Vol. II, p. 274.

Here we have five distinct and independent witnesses out of Luther's life from 1516 to 1543, first, that he at the start regarded the righteousness of God as that which condemned sinners; second, that he came to look upon it as the forgiving righteousness of God which comes to sinners through faith; and, third, that that change of view was attained only after struggle and anxiety, like bright sunshine after thunderpeals.

We must think, therefore, that Denifle does Luther great injustice in denying these narratives, making them pure inventions. Besides, they coincide with the whole course of Luther's life and explain it.

In one respect, however, Denifle is more accurate than the Reformer. Luther says that all the doctors except Augustine interpret Rom. 1:17 as referring to the retributive justice of God, and not as referring to the mercy by which he considers the sinner righteous by faith. On this assertion of Luther, Denifle says:

Of sixty teachers until Luther whose printed and MS writings I have searched through after that interpretation and conception of Rom. 1:17 and related passages (Rom. 3:21, 22; 10:3) falsely ascribed to them by him. not a single one of them (of whom Luther knew several) has confessed that; all, on the contrary, by the righteousness of God have not understood the anger of God or his retributive righteousness, but that by which we become justified, his unmerited justifying grace, of which one takes part through faith, a true and real justification of man from the side of God (of course, not in the sense of sola fides, faith alone, rejected by the whole church); and here, as especially in Rom. 10:3, have placed this justification after the manner of St. Paul over against their own.

Luther was not a scholar or a fair controversialist. He either did not read his mediaeval texts correctly, or he did not quote them correctly, as Denifle has shown. In other places Luther quotes his authorities with a rough correctness, but not with exactness. But Kawerau, the prcjfessor of church history at Breslau, has shown on his side that Denifle speaks too hastily here.12 For Lyra explains Rom. 1:17 ("from faith to faith") as from informal faith to formal faith, and it is only this last whose "acltts meritorius is of vitae beatae, which vivifies and justifies perfectly." Peter Lombard, the great mediaeval teacher, says: "When Christ speaks of " Kroker, Luther's Tischreden, pp. 309 f. « Kawerau, lac. cit., pp. 618, 619. justitia, the distributor or judge of merits is shown." '* But I suppose that it was not so much definite passages out of the great church teachers which Luther had in mind when he thought of Christ as the angry judge and when he imputed that thought to the church, but rather the general sentiment in the church, both among its teachers and the people. "We have feared before him" (Christ), says Luther, "more than before Moses; we knew not otherwise than that Christ was an angry judge, whose anger we with our good works and holy life would pacify, and whose grace we must obtain through the merits and intercession of the loving saints."1* That sentiment was a fact. Kawerau quotes the Dominican Job. Herold: "Whom the Son would destroy by his justice, the Mother draws in through mercy and indulgence." A song to Mary of 1477 says: "Mary, turn his wrath from me." A Franciscan vision in the Liber conformitalum sees two ladders leading to heaven. On trie top of one is Christ; on the other, Mary. St. Francis exhorts his brethren to ascend by the first. They try, but fall. Then they try the Mary ladder. "Forthwith, without any labor, they are received by the Virgin Mary into the kingdom of the heavens."15 It was this common feeling, this general sentiment concerning Christ as a judge and Mary as a helper, which Luther had in mind perhaps more than definite teachings of great theologians. In that sense he was right, even if in the last he was incorrect.

Denifle claims that this invented doctrine of justification by faith alone, was simply a cloak for sin, that it brought about no renewal, and had no necessary connection with good works. On this I would say:

It was characteristic of all the Reformers and all the Reformation creeds to lay tremendous stress on sin, on the fact of depravity. Sin clung to a man through his whole life. He could never get entirely rid of it, however sanctified he became. That idea, sprung from the misinterpretation of Rom., chap. 7, and from Augustine, passed into all the Reformation and post-Reformation creeds, and has ruled the Protestant churches from that day to this. Wesley was the only church teacher who saw the matter in its right relation, and who was bold enough to take at its face value the great words about the blood of Christ cleansing us from all sin, and yet insisted on total depravity in the sense that no man can be saved without the grace of God inciting; and after he is saved and entirely sanctified— as far as it is possible to be sanctified—he still has sins of weakness, inattention, and forgetfulness, for which to ask pardon.

'3 Sent. IV. Dist. 46, J3 [Migne 192: 953].

"4 Werke, Erlangen edition, Vol. I, pp. 20, 26; Vol. IV, pp. 33, 38.

«s Kawerau, with the references which he gives, p. 619.

But this overemphasis on depravity and the ever-remaining sin in Luther no more than in Calvin and the other Reformers meant that there was no saving element in justification and regeneration, and that the sin must not be striven against and conquered, and step by step driven out of the life. That is a calumny still repeated by Catholic and high-church writers. Luther says distinctly that we

must strive and fight against lust and the evil desires in us which excite us to sin. .... As often as thou feelest thyself tempted to sin, thou shouldest think immediately that thou withstand these darts, and pray to the Lord Jesus that these sins do not overtake and conquer thee, but that thou shalt overcome through his grace.16

Whereas Denifle says that his doctrine was only a pretext for a secure resting in sin, Luther really taught the exact opposite:

Even therefore teach we faith, that therewith the law may be fulfilled

Certain mad spirits preach, "Even if thou do not keep the commandments and simply believest, thou shalt be saved." No, dear man, that is not so. Thou shalt never possess the Kingdom of Heaven. It must come to this, that thou keepest the commandments and art in love with God and thy neighbor. So through Christ thy sins become altogether forgiven. But not thereto that we should not fulfil the law, but that it is only now possible to keep the law which is the eternal, irrevocable, unchangeable will of God. Therefore it is necessary to preach grace that one may find counsel and help how one should come to this (fulfilment of the law).1*

What we teach of faith is that it may serve thereto that we are able now to keep the Ten Commandments, that we may know how we may do that, whither and whereby such power can be received.'8

When will this eternal falsehood down, that Luther's doctrine of faith is only a cover for sin!

I do not say there was nothing lacking in Luther's conception of faith, regeneration, and sanctification. Here he was too external and Catholic. Faith as a personal, ethical appropriation of the saving Christ, as a living grip on the Savior, he did not emphasize as much as he should. His idea of faith remained too mediaeval. Kohler, of the University of Giessen, in his able pamphlet, Ein Wort zu Denifles Luther, has some admirable remarks here. He says:

What danger lurks in the unqualified form of Luther's statement, "Always and eternally certain of life in Christ!" We too easily rob it of its strength if we find

i« Loc. tit., Vol. XV, pp. 53 £f. -7 Ibid., Vol. XIV, pp. 179 ff. 18 Ibid., Vol. XXI, p. 94. An excellent discussion of this subject is found in Professor Walther (of Rostock), Deniftes Luther (Leipzig, 1904), pp. 30-40.

in it only the consciousness of being constantly supported by God. It means much more to Luther. It signifies for him, as for Paul, a standing in a superhuman sphere, a transcendent existence, a "spiritual consciousness of the Lord." There man is "certain," so certain that he can demand of God the gift to him of powers of grace. If God does not respond, man can then present his account as Shylock did his bond, and if God will not acknowledge the receipt written by the blood of Christ, then man can wash his hands of the entire matter. Luther constantly guarded against the misinterpretation of this "certainty" in the sense of moral laxity (Paul's freedom as a cloak for wickedness, Gal. 5:15; i Peter i: 16). He was never an out-and-out quietist. His ethical nature broke out again and again. The process of salvation was so strong that in the antino- mian strife he, against Agricola, attacked the freedom from moral condemnation through law preceding faith, and rejected the view that one can have a saving faith while remaining in the grossest sin against the law of God—but with all that Luther never found a satisfying relation between morality and religion. These two thoughts, inwardly sinful, outwardly justified, were both emphasized too strongly by Luther for him to solve satisfactorily the problem of religion and morality, from the side of religion in the process of salvation as well as from morality in everyday life. There was too little morality in both cases. No sufficiently firm theological dam was erected at that time against misconception; else we should not be able to explain the immorality that was carried on among the Lutherans under cover of Christian liberty. Nor can we explain the whole Anabaptist superstitious movement: it was a protest against the threatened mechanism of the Lutheran justification doctrine, and its neglect of moralism.1*

Let me take a few other points in Denifle's indictment. He says that Luther misrepresents the teachings of the Catholic church in claiming that it holds to two classes of persons—the perfect class, those who have taken the monastic vows, and the imperfect, the general run of Christians. But here Luther is right and Denifle wrong. St. Bernard of Clairveaux was a good Catholic when he said that the monastic life, on account of its perfect renunciation of the world, the wonderful height of its spiritual life, overtops all the other kinds of human life, and makes its confessors similar to angels, and'other men dissimilar.20 St. Thomas Aquinas says that all men ought to strive for perfection, and places the so-called evangelical counsels only as a means of acquiring it. But these counsels are sure means, and the highest means; therefore he can call the monastic state the status perjectionis: ex tribus votis status religionis integraiur ("the state of religion is perfected by the three vows")." He says again that if "one pledges his whole life to God, so that he can attend upon him in perfect works, he assumes simply the condition or state of perfection.""

'» Ein Wort zu Deniflcs Luther (Tubingen and Leipzig, 1904), pp. 44, 45.

*° Migne, Vol. CLXXXII, p. 889.

" Summa, 2. 2. q. 186 a. 7. " De perfection* vitae spirituals, chap. 17.

The Catholic conception of fulfilling such a pledge was the priesthood or

monastery.

Luther says that there is a dependence on works rather than on Christ in the absolution formula; and Denifle says that Luther lies, that there is no mention of works, and never has been, in the absolution formula (p. 339). In his commentary on Galatians Luther gives a formula which the monks used among themselves, as follows:

Form of monastic absolution: The Lord have mercy upon thee, brother! In the remission of thy sins, in the increase of merits and of grace, and in the reward of eternal life, may there be granted to thee the merit of the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the blessed Mary, always Virgin, and all the saints, by the merit of our order, weight of religion, humility of confession, contrition of heart, good works which thou hast done and shall do for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Now, inasmuch as Luther was himself a monk, and must frequently have heard this absolution, it is incredible that he invented it. Besides, his brethren could say: "We never heard of it." Nor is there anything contrary to Catholic doctrine in it. An actual form of absolution is that given in the RUuale Romanum (Regensburg, 1888), p. 58:

May the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the merits of the blessed Virgin Mary and all the saints, whatever of good you may do, or evil you may sustain, be to thee in remission of sins, augmentation of grace, and reward of eternal life.

Luther says that the Catholic authorities represented entrance into a monastery as virtually equivalent to a second baptism, as a purifying from sin.2-5 Denifle denies it (p. 231). Did they or did they not ? Luther's contemporary, the Franciscan of Leipzig, Marcus von Weida, says that those who enter a cloister, therefore giving up their free will to honor God, "receive grace from God, so that they are clean from all sin, and they are looked upon by him as an innocent child that has just been lifted out of baptism."24 This was not an extravagant opinion of the Leipzig Franciscan, but went back straight to the Doctor Angelicus, Thomas of Aquino, who teaches that all men who out of right thought take the monastic spiritual life, if they are obedient, deserve the perfect forgiveness of all their sins, are freed from pain and guilt, and are considered equally by God and the church as though they had just now come from the sacrament of holy baptism.*5 So much for the so-called monk's baptism.

'3 Loc. tit., Vol. XXXI, p. 478.

"4 See N. Paulus, "Markus von Weida," Zeitsckrift far hatholische Tkeologie, Vol. XXVI (19011), pp. 253 f.

"5 IV Sent. dist. 4, q 3 a; 5. Th. 2. 2. 9. 189 a. 3 ad. 3. See Kolde, of. tit., pp. 33-42; Kohler, op. tit., pp. 15-17.

Luther says (which angers Denifle) that the Catholic church by its monastic vows, despises and dishonors marriage and woman. This brings up Luther's whole teaching concerning marriage, which has been one of the chief causes of the hatred of him by the church. Luther based marriage on the physical constitution of the race, on the command of God to be fruitful and multiply; and he looked upon any rejection of that constitution, such as vows of celibacy, as a blasphemous infringement of the divine order of the world. For this reason he spoke with scorn and fierce invective against the Roman church which, while ostensibly making marriage a sacrament, had really lowered and actually rejected it in the case of thousands who sadly needed it, as results showed. He did not say that none had a call outside the life of marriage; he provided for such cases. He believed that God's wonder-working grace was sufficient for them. But marriage is a physical necessity for the race, and the church in denying it to so many of her members was a mother of immorality. In one respect Luther was still Catholic in his thought of marriage. Augustine and all the mediaeval teachers looked upon marriage as a kind of lesser and necessary evil, permitted on account of the concupiscence of mankind, which might, of course, be turned into a blessing by God's grace, but which was to be avoided by those who sought the higher reaches of holiness. Luther always abode in that sensuous, physical side. The modern conception of marriage as an intellectual and spiritual union, as a sacrament of love where two souls are united—emblem of the self-sacrificing love of Christ for the church, which therefore excludes polygamy as destroying the very essence of marriage—that spiritual side of marriage was out of Luther's thought, as it was out of the thought of his time. But that man could serve God better single, that there was sin in the marriage state, or that that state was lower than celibacy, Luther rejected with his whole soul. For that reason Catholics have turned the vials of their wrath on the Reformer.

Let me close with a thought or two growing out of this study. Luther undeniably offended in many ways. His coarseness of language was sometimes unendurable even to that coarse age. His denunciations of the church were sometimes too fierce for truth. He exaggerated, he quoted from memory, and so misquoted at times. His controversial methods, as judged by our exact and polite age, were abominable. So the birds have come home to roost. Time has brought about its revenges. With what judgment he judged he has been judged. All the coarseness and fierceness and exaggeration which he dealt out to his adversaries, they have from that day till now dealt out to him. They have paid him back in far worse than in his own coin. Not only so, but literary men among Protestants have joined in the war against Luther. Sir William Hamilton, the great Scotch philosopher, wrote a most damaging assault upon him. He has been followed by many, especially in the Episcopal church. Unless we love truth more than all things else, unless we are chaste in lip, honorable in controversy, charitable and broad-minded in our dealings with others, the measure we have dealt to others will be dealt to us. Our exaggerations, our misrepresentations, our lapses and slips, will come back upon us. But, for all this, Luther abides, for what he was and for the work he did, as the most significant man of his century. As a path-breaker for the human spirit he even overtops Calvin, in some respects a better and greater man. No man since Paul surpasses Luther in historical significance. Says Professor Seeberg, of Berlin:

He was no "saint," and the traits of those demonic qualities of the leaders of world-history give not only light but shadow. That is true also of Luther. But that signifies nothing over against the knowledge that he proclaimed the gospel to his people with a power and an innerliness as no German has before or since; that with a courage and a God-confidence such as scarcely anyone had before him since Paul he set forward the truth against a world of enemies; that he served, not himself, but the cause in the depth of battle no less than on the heights of success. That is always true of a great man and of a great Christian. Over against this, what will it do to say that he had his faults, that his historical learning had gaps, that his system was immature, that his polemic was sharp, and in some cases wrong?*6

What, then, is Luther's significance for us ? (i) He broke the back of Roman Catholic theology by restoring Christ's and Paul's doctrine of justification by faith alone. With that went a herd of false things—necessity of a pristhood between God and man, power of the priesthood, sacrifice of the mass, pilgrimages, shrines, Mariolatry, and all the thousand implements of mediaeval piety. Man stands again face to face with his God. That was the central point of his theology—not his sacramental doctrine, not his predestination, but that alone; and that has been the most fruitful acquisition which any man has given to the church since Paul's brave spirit went up to God outside of the walls of Rome. (2) He restored home te the clergy, made the ministry again a thing of naturalness, power, and Christian influence, resting on a pure morality centered on the divinest institution on earth—the home. Now men could begin to live among their fellows as men, loving God and their brothers, and finding the highest joy and the highest service and the highest reward in doing God's will

16 Luther und Luihertum in der neuesten katholischen Bcleuchtung, (Leipzig 1904), p. 30.

where He had placed them. (3) Luther will always remain^as an example and inspiration, as the greatest of modern men, who counted all things but loss, and dared death itself for the cross and the truth. " Here I stand! I can do no otherwise! God help me!" And he, being dead, yet speaketh.

John Alfred Faulkner. Drew Theological Seminary, Madison, N. J.

Catholic Encyclopedia: Heinrich Denifle

Heinrich Seuse Denifle

(Baptized JOSEPH.)

Paleographer and historian, born at Imst in the Austrian Tyrol, 16 Jan., 1844, d. at Munich, 10 June, 1905. His father, who was the village schoolmaster and church organist, had him educated in the episcopal seminary of Brixen. On his reception, at Graz, 22 Sept., 1861, into the Dominican Order, he took the name of Heinrich. His studies of Aristotle and St. Thomas were begun in Graz and continued in Rome and Marseilles. After his return to Graz, Father Denifle taught philosophy and theology for ten years (1870-1880), and during this period also he was one of the best preachers in Austria. A course of apologetic sermons delivered in Graz cathedral "Die katholische Kirche und das Ziel der Menschheit" was printed in 1872. Denifle, who had loved music from his boyhood and composed pieces at fifteen, also published in 1872, as his first literary essay, an article on the Gregorian Chant: "Schonheit und Würde des Chorals". That even then his mind was occupied with a subject about which his last and perhaps his greatest work was destined to be written, is evident from a series of articles entitled "Tetzel und Luther", which appeared in 1873. From that time onward, though he preached occasionally, the biography of Denifle is the description of his literary achievements. His life therefore may be divided into four periods characterized respectively by work on theology and mysticism, medieval universities, the Hundred Years War between France and England with its consequences to the Church, and Luther and Lutheranism.

A subject to which in early years he devoted much of his attention was the relation existing between scholastic theology and medieval mysticism. It was comparatively unknown, and had in fact been grossly misrepresented by some flippant writers according to whom the German mystics were the precursors of the German Reformers. Denifle's researches put the matter in its true light. He discovered in various libraries of Austria, Germany, and Switzerland copious materials in fourteenth century manuscripts, and a selection of 2500 texts was given to the public in his book "Das geistliche Leben. Eine Blumenlese as den deutschen Mystikern des 14. Jahrhunderts" (Graz, 1873). He also began a critical edition of Blessed Henry Suso's works (the first and only volume of Denifle's edition appeared in 1888 -- another edition is in progress 1908), and on Suso and other mystics he wrote several articles (fifteen in all with appendices) published in various periodicals from 1873 to 1889. His fame as a palæographer, German philologist, and textual critic arose from these investigations and especially from his studies on Tauler, Eckhart, and Blessed Henry Suso. Up to 1875 the most disputed problem in the history of German mysticism was that of the "Gottesfreund" and his marvellous influence. Denifle solved it simply by showing that the "Gottesfreund" was a myth. This discovery, which created quite a sensation, and several others brought him into controversy with Preger and Schmidt, who had till then been looked up to as authorities on the history of mysticism, and also into controversy with Jundt. He proved and demonstrated that Catholic mysticism rests on scientific theology. Denifle's remarks were often sharp, but there could be no doubt that his arguments and his destructive criticism were unanswerable. Catholic and non-Catholic savants. alike, as Schrörs, Kirsch, Müller, Schönbach, etc., have recognized that he was immeasurably superior to his adversaries. This was owing to his intimate knowledge of the Fathers, of theology -- both scholastic and mystic -- of medieval history, and lastly of Middle-High German with its dialects.

In 1880 Denifle was made socius, or assistant, to the general of his order, and summoned to Rome, where a new field of inquiry awaited him. Leo XIII had commanded that a critical edition of the works of St. Thomas Aquinas should be begun, and Denifle was commissioned to search for the best manuscripts. He visited the libraries in Italy, Austria, Germany, Bavaria, Holland, England, France, Spain, and Portugal. Nothing escaped his eagle eye, and while preparing for the new edition, before his return to Italy in 1883, he had also gathered abundant materials for his own special study. In the autumn of 1880 Leo XIII had opened the secret archives of the Vatican to scholars; he had in 1789 appointed as archivist Cardinal Hergenröther. On the latter's recommendation the pope now (1 Dec., 1883) mace Denifle sub-archivist, a post which he held till his death. Since the beginning of his residence in Rome, Denifle, who found nothing there for his contemplated history of mysticism, had been investigating the career of a celebrated prophet, i.e. the Abbot Joachim, and the reasons of the condemnation of his "Evangelium Æternum" by the University of Paris. This led him to study the controversy between the university and the mendicant orders. As he found du Boulay's history of the university inaccurate, Denifle, who was a foe to adventurous statements and hasty generalizations, resolved to write a history based on original documents, and as an introduction to it, to commence with a volume on the origin of the medieval university system, for which he already had prepared copious transcripts and notes. His leading idea was that to appreciate the mystics one should understand not only the theology they had learned, but also the genius of the place where it was commonly taught. The first and only volume appeared in 1885 under the title "Die Universitäten des Mittelalters bis 1400" (xlv-814). The wealth of erudition it contains is extraordinary. The work was everywhere applauded; it led, however, to a somewhat bitter controversy. G. Kaufmann attacked it, but was worsted by the erudite and unsparing author. The most copious collection on the subject to be found in any archives is that possessed by the Vatican, and this Denifle was the first to use. Munich, Vienna, and other centres supplied the rest. Among his discoveries two may be mentioned, namely, that the universities did not, as a rule, owe their origin to cathedral schools, and that in the majority of them at first theology was not taught. The University of Paris formed an exception. Denifle had planned four other volumes; viz. a second on the development of the organization of universities, a third on the origin of the University of Paris, a fourth on its development to the end of the thirteenth century, and a fifth on its controversies with the mendicant orders. But the Conseil Général des Facultés de Paris, which had in 1885 decided on publishing the "Chartularium", or records of the University of Paris, resolved on 27 March, 1887, to entrust the work of Denifle, with Emile Chatelain, the Sorbonne librarian, as collaborateur. This quite suited Denifle, for he had resolved not to write before he had collected all the relevant documents, so with the assistance of Chatelain he began his gigantic task. In less than ten years four folio volumes of the "Chartularium" appeared as follows: 1889, volume I, A.D. 1200-1286 (xxxvi-714 pp.), 530 original documents, with fifty-five from the preparatory period, 1163-1200; 1891, volume II, 1286-1350 (xxiii-808 pp.), 661 documents; 1894, volume III, 1350-1384 (xxxvii-777 pp.), 520 documents; 1897, volume IV, 1384-1452 (xxxvi-835 pp.), 988 documents, and two volumes of the "Auctarium". This monumental work, the "Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis", contains invaluable information regarding its inner life, organization, famous professors and students, relations with popes and kings, controversies, etc., during the period when this university was the chief centre of theological learning. "With its aid", as Kirsch remarks, "a history of medieval theology has at last become possible." Some idea of the labour involved in its preparation may be gathered from the fact that all the great libraries and archives in Europe were visited, that Denifle travelled from Paris to Rome forty times, and that in the Vatican archives alone he examined 200,000 letters, of which he utilized 80,000 in his notes (see II, p. 17), though of course more material was found in Paris than in Rome. In order to preserve the unity of the "Chartularium", any reference to the "nations" was relegated to the "Auctarium". The two volumes published contain the "Liber Procuratorum Nationis Anglicanæ 1333-1446". Fournier, who rashly criticized Denifle and Chatelain, fared badly at their hands. After Denifle's death the materials he had collected for another volume were entrusted to Chatelain, so that the work right be continued. Owing to the vastness and completeness of his research and to his amazing erudition, what Denifle gave to the world, even though for him it was only a preliminary study, has sufficed to make him the great authority on medieval universities. (See Merkle, Dreves, etc., or Rashdall's "Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages", Oxford, 1895.) In order to publish valuable texts which he had deciphered and the results of his studies on various subjects, together with Father Ehrle, S.J., the sub-librarian of the Vatican, he founded in 1885 the "Archiv für Literatur und Kirchengeschichte des Mittelalters". The two friends were the only contributors. The first five years of this serial contain several articles from his pen, on various universities, on Abelard and other scholars, on religious orders, on popes, etc., Denifle's extensive acquaintance with manuscripts and his skill in palæography were also put at the service of beginners in the art of deciphering by his annotated "Specimina palæographica Regestorum Pontificum ab Innocentio III ad Urbanum V" (Rome, 1888). Among its sixty-four plates, that representing the Vatican transcript of the "Unam Sanctam" is especially valuable. The work was the offering of the papal archivists to Leo XIII on his golden jubilee.

A work of another kind suggested itself to him while gathering in the Vatican archives materials for his annotations on the "Chartularium". Denifle noticed in the three hundred volumes of "Registers of Petitions" addressed to Clement VI and Urban V, between 1342 and 1393, that many came from France during the Hundred Years War between that country and England. So for the sake of a change of occupation, or "un travail accessoire" as he calls it, Denifle went again through these volumes (each about 600 pages folio). In 1897 he published: "La désolation des églises, monasteres, hôpitaux, en France vers le milieu du XVe siècle". It contains a harrowing description of the state of France, based on 1063 contemporary documents, most of which were discovered in the Vatican. Then, in order to give an explanation a similar account of the cause of all these calamities, he published in 1889: "La guerre de cent ans et la désolation des églises, monastères, et hôpitaux, tom. I, jusqu'à la mort de Charles V" (1385). Though the work was not continued the enormous amount of recondite information brought together and illustrated for the first time makes the volume indispensable to historians (see e.g., his account of the Battle of Crécy and the Black Prince).

Denifle had for years been studying the history of medieval theology and mysticism, as well as the lives of saints and scholars by whom in both departments progress had been effected, on the other hand his investigations revealed the decadence of ecclesiastical life during the Hundred Years War and caused him to amass documents (about 1200) showing the many abuses then prevalent among the clergy both secular and regular. The contrast was marked. As was his wont he resolved to solve the problem that arose, to see what could have been the result of such moral corruption. These new researches were not confined to France, they gradually extended to Germany. Denifle found proof that in both countries, with praiseworthy exceptions, during the fourteenth century things went from bad to worse, but he saw that the end had not been reached yet. He traced the downward course of profligacy to the third decade of the sixteenth century, and there he stopped for he had found the abyss. Crimes which ecclesiastics and religious were ashamed of in the preceding era now became to one section a cause of self-glorification, and were even regarded as miracles and signs of sanctity. At the beginning of this painful investigation Denifle had not a thought about Luther, but now he saw that he could not avoid him; to estimate the new departure it was necessary to understand Luther, for of this appalling depravity he was the personification as well as the preacher. So Denifle devoted many years to the task of ascertaining for himself how, and why, and when Luther fell. The Vatican archives and various libraries, particularly those of Rostock and Kiel, supplied original documents to which this independent study was confined. As usual Denifle made a series of discoveries. His work, which is divided into three parts, if we take its second edition, is in no sense a biography. The first part is a critique of Luther's treatise on monastic vows. It examines his views on the vow of chastity in detail, and convicts him of ignorance, mendaciousness, etc. The second part which is entitled "a contribution to the history of exegesis, literature and dogmatic theology in the Middle Ages", refutes Luther's assertion that his doctrine of justification by faith, i.e. his interpretation of Romans 1:17 was the traditional one, by giving the relevant passages from no fewer than sixty-five commentators. Of these works many exist only in manuscript. To discover them it was necessary to traverse Europe; this part which appeared posthumously is a masterpiece of critical erudition. The third part shows that the year 1515 was the turning point in Luther's career, and that his own account of his early life is utterly untrustworthy, that his immorality was the real source of his doctrine, etc. No such analysis of Luther's theology and exegesis was ever given to the learned world for which it was written.

For some time previous it had been known that Denifle was engaged on such a work, but when in 1904 the first volume of 860 pages of "Luther und Luthertum in der ersten Entwicklung quelienmässig darstellt" appeared, it fell like a bomb into the midst of the Reformer's admirers. The edition was exhausted in a month. The leading Protestants and rationalists in Germany, Seeberg, Harnack, and seven other professors, besides a host of newspaper writers attempted to defend Luther, but in vain. Denifle's crushing answer to Harnack and Seeberg, "Luther in rationalistischer und christlicher Beleuchtung" appeared in March, 1904, and two months afterwards he issued a revised edition of the first part of the first volume; the second was brought out in 1905 and the third in 1906 by A. Weiss, O.P. He has the second volume on Lutheranism, for which the author left materials, ready (1908) for the press.

Denifle has been censured by some and praised by others for the tone of this work. Perhaps if it were less indignant the amazing erudition displayed would produce a greater effect. There was no need of hard words in a work, to use the words of Cambridge University when it honoured Denifle, on "Lutherum ab eodem ad fidem documentorum depictum". He has thrown more light on Luther's career and character than all the editors of Luther's works and all Luther's biographers taken together. Denifle wished to offend no man, but he certainly resolved on showing once and for all the Reformer in his true colours. He makes Luther exhibit himself. Protestant writers, he remarks betray an utter lack of the historical method in dealing with the subject, and the notions commonly accepted are all founded on fable. As he pointedly observes: "Critics, Harnack and Ritschl more than others, may say what they like about God Incarnate; but let no one dare to say a word of disapproval about Luther before 1521". Denifle's impeachment is no doubt a terrible one, but apart from some trifling inaccuracies in immaterial points it is established by irrefragable proofs.

Denifle, who was beloved by Leo XIII and Pius X was a conductor of the cardinalitial Commission of Studies, a member of the Imperial Academy of Sciences (Vienna), and of those of Paris, Prague, Berlin, Göttingen, honorary Doctor of the Universities of Münster and Innsbruck, member of the Legion of Honour, of the Order of the Iron Crown, etc. He was on his way to Cambridge, where he and his friend Father Ehrle were to be made Honorary Doctors of that university, when he was struck down by the hand of death.

Sources
Denifle's Works in Acta Cap. Gen. Ord. Praed. 1907 (official obituary notice); KIRCH, Le P. Henri Suso Denifle O.P. (reprint Louvain, 1905); GRABMANN, P. Heinrich Denifle, O.P., Eine Würdigung seiner Forschungearbeit (Mainz, 1905); GRAUERT, P. Heinrich Denifle, O.P., Ein Wort zum Gedächtniss und zum Frieden. Ein Beitrag auch zum Luther-Streit (Freiburg 1906); WEISS, Lutherpsychologie als Schlüssel zur Lutherlegende -- Denifle's Untersuchungen kritisch nachgeprüft (Mainz, 1906).

About this page
APA citation. Walsh, R. (1908). Heinrich Seuse Denifle. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved May 2, 2009 from New Advent: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04719a.htm

MLA citation. Walsh, Reginald. "Heinrich Seuse Denifle." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 4. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908. 2 May 2009 .

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by Albert Judy, O.P.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. Remy Lafort, Censor. Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York

Luther's Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent; Matthew 21:1-9

Sermon for the First Sunday in Advent; Matthew 21:1-9

A Sermon by Martin Luther; taken from his Church Postil of 1521.

[The following sermon is taken from volume I:17-58 of The Sermons of Martin Luther, published by Baker Book House (Grand Rapids, MI). It was originally published in 1906 in english by Lutherans in All Lands Press (Minneapolis, MN), as The Precious and Sacred Writings of Martin Luther, vol. 11. The original title of this sermon appears below. The pagination from the Baker edition has been maintained for referencing. This e-text was scanned and edited by Dr. Richard P. Bucher, it is in the public domain and it may be copied and distributed without restriction.]

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1. In the preface I said that there are two things to be noted and considered in the Gospel lessons: first, the works of Christ presented to us as a gift and blessing on which our faith is to cling and exercise itself; secondly, the same works offered as an example and model for us to imitate and follow. All Gospel lessons the us through light first faith and then good works. We will therefore consider this Gospel under three heads: speaking first of faith; secondly of good works, and thirdly of the lesson story and it's hidden meaning.


I. CONCERNING FAITH


2. This Gospel encourages and demands faith, or it pre-figures Christ coming with grace, and none may receive or accept save he who believes him to be the man, and has the mind, as this Gospel portrays in Christ. Nothing but the mercy, tenderness and kindness of Christ are here shown, and he who so receives and believes on him is saved. He sits not upon a proud steed, an animal of war, nor does he come in great pomp and power, but sitting upon an ass, an animal of peace fit only for burdens and labor and a help to man. He indicates by this that he comes not to frighten man, nor to drive or crush him, but to help and to carry his burden for him. And although it was the custom of the country to ride on asses and to use horses for war, as the Scriptures often tell us, yet

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here the object is to show that the entrance of this king shall be meek and lowly.


Again it also shows the pomp and conduct of the disciples towards Christ who bring the colt to Christ, set him thereon, and spread their garments in the way; also that of the multitude who also spread their garments in the way and cut branches from the trees. They manifested no fear nor terror, but only blessed confidence in him as one for whom they dared to do such things and who would take it kindly and readily consent to it.


3. Again, he begins his journey and comes to the Mount of Olives to indicate that he comes out of pure mercy. For olive oil in the Scriptures signifies the grace of God that soothes and strengthens the soul as oil soothes and strengthens the body.


4. Thirdly, there is no armor present, no war-cry, but songs and praise, rejoicing and thanksgiving to the Lord.


5. Fourthly, Christ, as Luke 19,41 writes, weeps over Jerusalem because she does not know nor receive such grace; yet he was so grieved at her loss that he did not deal harshly with her.


6. Fifthly, his goodness and mercy are best shown when he quotes the words of the prophets, Isa. 62, 11; Zach. 9,9, and tenderly invites men to believe and accept Christ, for the fulfilling of which prophecies the events of this Gospel took place and the story was written, as the Evangelist himself testifies. Therefore we must look upon this verse as the chief part of this Gospel, for in it Christ is pictured to us and we are told what we are to believe, and to expect of him, what we are to seek in him, and how we may be benefitted by him.


7. First he says: "Tell ye" the daughter of Zion. This is said to the ministry and a new sermon is given them to preach, namely, nothing but what the words following indicate, a right knowledge of Christ. Whoever preaches anything else is a wolf and deceiver. This is one of the verses in which the Gospel is promised of which Paul writes in Rom. 1, 2; for the Gospel is a sermon from Christ, as he is here placed before us, calling for faith in him.

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8. I have often said that there are two kinds of faith. First, a faith in which you indeed believe that Christ is such a man as he is described and proclaimed here and in all the Gospels, but do not believe that he is such a man for you, and are in doubt whether you have any part in him and think: Yes, he is such a man to others, to Peter, Paul, and the blessed saints; but who knows that he is such to me and that I may expect the same from him and may confide in it, as these saints did?


9. Behold, this faith is nothing, it does not receive Christ nor enjoy him, neither can it feel any love and affection for him or from him. It is a faith about Christ and not in or of Christ, a faith which the devils also have as well as evil men. For who is it that does not believe that Christ is a gracious king to the saints? This vain and wicked faith is now taught by the pernicious synagogues of Satan. The universities (Paris and her sister schools), together with the monasteries and all Papists, say that this faith is sufficient to make Christians. In this way they virtually deny Christian faith, make heathen and Turks out of Christians, as St. Peter in 2 Pet. 2,1 had foretold: "There shall be false teachers, who shall privily bring in destructive heresies, denying even the Master that bought them."


10. In the second place he particularly mentions, "The daughter of Zion." In these words he refers to the other, the true faith. For if he commands that the following words concerning Christ be proclaimed, there must be some one to hear, to receive, and to treasure them in firm faith. He does not say: Tell of the daughter of Zion, as if some one were to believe that she has Christ; but to her you are to say that she is to believe it of herself, and not in any wise doubt that it will be fulfilled as the words declare. That alone can be called Christian faith, which believes without wavering that Christ is the Saviour not only to Peter and to the saints but also to you. Your salvation does not depend on the fact that you believe Christ to be the Saviour of the godly, but that he is a Saviour to you and has become your own.


11. Such a faith will work in you love for Christ and joy

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in him, and good works will naturally follow. If they do not, faith is surely not present; for where faith is, there the Holy Ghost is and must work love and good works.


12. This faith is condemned by apostate and rebellious Christians, the pope, bishops, priests, monks, and the universities. They call it arrogance to desire to be like the saints. Thereby they fulfill the prophecy of Peter in 2 Pet. 2, 2, where he says of these false teachers: "By reason of whom the way of the truth shall be evil spoken of." For this reason, when they hear faith praised, they think love and good works are prohibited. In their great blindness they do not know what faith, love and good works are. If you would be a Christian you must permit these words to be spoken to you and hold fast to them and believe without a doubt that you will experience what they say. You must not consider it arrogance that in this you are like the saints, but rather a necessary humility and despair not of God's grace but of your own worthiness. Under penalty of the loss of salvation, does God ask for boldness toward his proffered grace. If you do not desire to become holy like the saints, where will you abide? That would be arrogance if you desired to be saved by your own merit and works, as the Papists teach. They call that arrogance which is faith, and that faith which is arrogance; poor, miserable, deluded people!


13. If you believe in Christ and in his advent, it is the highest praise and thanks to God to be holy. If you recognize, love, and magnify his grace and work in you, and cast aside and condemn self and the works of self, then are you a Christian. We say: "I believe in the holy Christian church, the communion of saints." Do you desire to be a part of the holy Christian church and communion of saints, you must also be holy as she is, yet not of yourself but through Christ alone in whom all are holy.


14. Thirdly be says: "Behold." With this word he rouses us at once from sleep and unbelief as though be had something great, strange, or remarkable to offer, something we have long wished for and now would receive with joy. Such waking up is necessary for the reason that everything that concerns faith

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is against reason and nature; for example, how can nature and reason comprehend that such an one should be king of Jerusalem who enters in such poverty and humility as to ride upon a borrowed ass? How does such an advent become a great king? But faith is of the nature that it does not judge nor reason by what it sees or feels but by what it hears. It depends upon the Word alone and not on vision or sight. For this reason Christ was received as a king only by the followers of the word of the prophet, by the believers in Christ, by those who judged and received his kingdom not by sight but by the spirit-these are the true daughters of Zion. For it is not possible for those not to be offended in Christ who walk by sight and feeling and do not adhere firmly to the Word.


15. Let us receive first and hold fast this picture in which the nature of faith is placed before us. For as the appearance and object of faith as here presented is contrary to nature and reason, so the same ineffectual and unreasonable appearance is to be found in all articles and instances of faith. It would be no faith if it appeared and acted as faith acts and as the words indicate. It is faith because it does not appear and deport itself as faith and as the words declare.


If Christ had entered in splendor like a king of earth, the appearance and the words would have been according to nature and reason and would have seemed to the eye according to the words, but then there would have been no room for faith. He who believes in Christ must find riches in poverty, honor in dishonor, joy in sorrow, life in death, and hold fast to them in that faith which clings to the Word and expects such things.


16. Fourthly: "Thy king." Here he distinguishes this king from all other kings. It is thy king, he says, who was promised to you, whose own you are, who alone shall direct you, yet in the spirit and not in the body. It is he for whom you have yearned from the beginning, whom the fathers have desired to see, who will deliver you from all that has hitherto burdened, troubled, and held you captive.


Oh, this is a comforting word to a believing heart, for

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without Christ, man is subjected to many raging tyrants who are not kings but murderers, at whose hands he suffers great misery and fear. These are the devil, the flesh, the world, sin, also the law and eternal death, by all of which the troubled conscience is burdened, is under bondage, and lives in anguish. For where there is sin there is no clear conscience; where there is no clear conscience, there is a life of uncertainty and an unquenchable fear of death and hell in the presence of which no real joy can exist in the heart, as Lev. 26, 36 says: "The sound of a driven leaf shall chase them."


17. Where the heart receives the king with a firm faith, it is secure and does not fear sin, death, hell, nor any other evil; for he well knows and in no wise doubts that this king is the Lord of life and death, of sin and grace, of hell and heaven, and that all things are in his hand. For this reason he became our king and came down to us that he might deliver us from these tyrants and rule over us himself alone. Therefore he who is under this king cannot be harmed either by sin, death, hell, Satan, man or any other creature. As his king lives without sin and is blessed, so must he be kept forever without sin and death in living blessedness.


18. See, such great things are contained in these seemingly unimportant words: "Behold, thy king." Such boundless gifts are brought by this poor and despised king. All this reason does not understand, nor nature comprehend, but faith alone does. Therefore he is called thy king; thine, who art vexed and harassed by sin, Satan, death and hell, the flesh and the world, so that thou mayest be governed and directed in the grace, in the spirit, in life, in heaven, in God.


With this word, therefore, he demands faith in order that you may be certain that he is such a king to you, has such a kingdom, and has come and is proclaimed for this purpose. If you do not believe this of him, you will never acquire such faith by any work of yours. What you think of him you will have; what you expect of him you will find; and as you believe so shall it be to you. He will still remain what he is,

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the King of life, of grace, and of salvation, whether he is believed on or not.


19. Fifthly: He "cometh." Without doubt you do not come to him and bring him to you; he is too high and too far from you. With all your effort, work and labor you cannot come to him, lest you boast as though you had received him by your own merit and worthiness. No, dear friend, all merit and worthiness is out of the question, and there is nothing but demerit and unworthiness on your side, nothing but grace and mercy on his. The poor and the rich here come together, as Prov. 22, 2 says.


20. By this are condemned all those infamous doctrines of free will, which come from the pope, universities and monasteries. For all their teaching consists in that we are to begin and lay the first stone. We should by the power of free will first seek God, come to him, run after him and acquire his grace. Beware, beware of this poison! It is nothing but the doctrine of devils, by which all the world is betrayed. Before you can cry to God and seek him God must come to you and must have found you, as Paul says, Rom. 10, 14-15: "How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher, and how shall they preach except they be sent?" God must lay the first stone and begin with you, if you are to seek him and pray to him. He is present when you begin to seek. If he were not you could not accomplish anything but mere sin, and the greater the sin, the greater and holier the work you will attempt, and you will become a hardened hypocrite.


21. You ask, how shall we begin to be godly and what shall we do that God may begin his work in us? Answer: Do you not understand, it is not for you to work or to begin to be godly, as little as it is to further and complete it. Everything that you begin is in and remains sin, though it shines ever so brightly; you cannot do anything but sin, do what you will. Hence, the teaching of all the schools and monasteries is misleading, when they teach man to begin to pray and do

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good works, to found something, to give, to sing, to become spiritual and thereby to seek God's grace.


22. You say, however: Then I must sin from necessity, if by my free will I work and live without God? and I could not avoid sin, no matter what I would do? Answer: Truly it is so, that you must remain in sin, do what you will, and that everything is sin you do alone out of your own free will. For if out of your own free will you might avoid sin and do that which pleases God, what need would you have of Christ? He would be a fool to shed his blood for your sin, if you yourself were so free and able to do aught that is not sin. From this you learn how the universities and monasteries with their teachings of free will and good works, do nothing else but darken the truth of God so that we know not what Christ is, what we are and what our condition is. They lead the whole world with them into the abyss of hell, and it is indeed time that we eradicate from the earth all chapters and monasteries.



23. Learn then from this Gospel what takes place when God begins to make us godly, and what the first step is in becoming godly. There is no other beginning than that your king comes to you and begins to work in you. It is done in this way: The Gospel must be the first, this must be preached and heard. In it you bear and learn how all your works count for nothing before God and that everything is sinful that you work and do. Your king must first be in you and rule you. Behold, here is the beginning of your salvation; you relinquish your works and despair of yourself, because you hear and see that all you do is sin and amounts to nothing, as the Gospel tells you, and you receive your king in faith, cling to him, implore his grace and find consolation in his mercy alone.


But when you hear and accept this it is not your power, but God's grace, that renders the Gospel fruitful in you, so that you believe that you and your works arc nothing. For you see how few there are who accept it, so that Christ weeps over Jerusalem and, as now the Papists are doing, not only refuse it, but condemn such doctrine, for they will not have all their works to be sin, they desire to lay the first stone and rage and fume against the Gospel.

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24. Again, it is not by virtue of your power or your merit that the Gospel is preached and your king comes. God must send him out of pure grace. Hence, not greater wrath of God exists than where he does not send the Gospel; there is only sin, error and darkness, there man may do what he will. Again, there is no greater grace, than where he sends his Gospel, for there must be grace and mercy in its train, even if not all. perhaps only a few, receive it. Thus the pope's government is the most terrible wrath of God, so that Peter calls them. the children of execration, for they teach no Gospel, but mere human doctrine of their own works as we, alas, see in all the chapters, monasteries and schools.


25. This is what is meant by "Thy king cometh." You do not seek him, but he seeks you. You do not find him, he finds you. For the preachers come from him, not from you; their sermons come from him, not from you; your faith comes from him, not from you; everything that faith works in you comes from him, not from you; and where he does not come, you remain outside; and where there is no Gospel there is no God, but only sin and damnation, free will may do, suffer, work and live as it may and can. Therefore you should not ask, where to begin to be godly; there is no beginning, except where the king enters and is proclaimed.


26. Sixthly, he cometh "unto thee." Thee, thee, what does this mean? Is it not enough that he is your king? If he is yours how can he say, he comes to you? All this is stated by the prophet to present Christ in an endearing way and invite to faith. It is not enough that Christ saves us from the rule and tyranny of sin, death and hell, and becomes our king, but he offers himself to us for our possession, that whatever he is and has may be ours, as St. Paul writes, Rom. 8, 32: "He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not also with him freely give us all things?"


27. Hence the daughter of Zion has twofold gifts from Christ. The first is faith and the Holy Spirit in the heart, by which she becomes pure and free from sin. The other is Christ himself, that she may glory in the blessings given by Christ, as though everything Christ is and has were her own,

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and that she may rely upon Christ as upon her own heritage. Of this St. Paul speaks, Rom. 8, 34: "Christ maketh intercession for us." If he maketh intercession for us he will receive us and we will receive him as our Lord. And I Cor. 1, 30: "Christ was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption." Of the twofold gifts Isaiah speaks in 40, 1-2: "Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem; and cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned, for she hath received of Jehovah's hand double for all her sins."


Behold, this means that he comes to you, for your welfare, as your own; in that he is your king, you receive grace from him into your heart, so that he delivers you from sin and death, and thus becomes your king and you his subject. In coming to you he becomes your own, so that you partake of his treasures, as a bride, by the jewelry the bridegroom puts on her, becomes partner of his possessions. Oh, this is a joyful, comforting form of speech! Who would despair and be afraid of death and hell, if he believes in these words and wins Christ as his own?


28. Seventhly: "Meek." This word is to be especially noticed, and it comforts the sin- burdened conscience. Sin naturally makes a timid conscience, which fears God and flees, as Adam did in Paradise, and cannot endure the coming of God, the knowing and feeling that God is an enemy of sin and severely punishes it. Hence it flees and is afraid, when God is only mentioned, and is concerned lest he go at it tooth and nail. In order that such delusion and timidity may not pursue us he gives us the comforting promise that this king comes meekly.


As if he would say: Do not flee and despair for he does not come now as he came to Adam, to Cain, at the flood, at Babel, to Sodom and Gomorrah, nor as he came to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai; he comes not in wrath, does not wish to reckon with you and demand his debt. All wrath is laid aside, nothing but tenderness and kindness remain. He will

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now deal with you so that your heart will have pleasure, love and confidence in him, that henceforth you will much more abide with him and find refuge in him than you feared him and fled from him before. Behold, he is nothing but meekness to you, he is a different man, he acts as if he were sorry ever to have made you afraid and caused you to flee from his punishment and wrath. He desires to reassure and comfort you and bring you to himself by love and kindness.


This means to speak consolingly to a sin-burdened conscience, this means to preach Christ rightly and to proclaim his Gospel. How is it possible that such a form of speech should not make a heart glad and drive away all fear of sin, death and hell, and establish a free, secure and good conscience that will henceforth gladly do all and more than is commanded.


29. The Evangelist, however, altered the words of the prophet slightly. The prophet says in Zech. 9, 9: "Rejoice greatly, 0 daughter of Zion; shout, 0 daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy king cometh unto thee; he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass, even upon a colt, the foal of an ass." The Evangelist expresses the invitation to joy and exultation briefly in these words: "Tell the daughter of Zion." Further on he leaves out the words: "just and having salvation." Again the prophet says, "he is lowly," the Evangelist, "he is meek." The prophet says: "upon the colt, the foal of an ass," he mentions the last word in the plural number; the Evangelist says: "upon the colt, the foal of an ass that is used for daily and burden-bearing labor." How shall we harmonize these accounts?


30. First, we must keep in mind that the Evangelists do not quote the prophets word by word, it is enough for them to have the same meaning and to show the fulfillment, directing us to the Scriptures so that we ourselves may read, what they omit, and see for ourselves that nothing was written which is not richly fulfilled. It is natural, also, that he who has the substance and the fulfillment, does not care so much for the words. Thus we often find that the Evangelist, quote the

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prophets somewhat changed, yet it is done without detriment to the understanding and intent of the original.


31. To invite the daughter of Zion and the daughter of Jerusalem to joy and gladness the prophet abundantly gives us to understand that the coining of this king is most comforting to every sin-burdened conscience, since he removes all fear and trembling, so that men do not flee from him and look upon him as a severe judge, who will press them with the law, as Moses did, so that they could not have a joyful confidence in God, as the knowledge and realization of sin naturally come from the law. But he would arouse them with this first word to expect from him all grace and goodness. For what other reason should he invite them to rejoice and command them even to shout and be exceeding glad! He tells this command of God to all who are in sorrow and fear of God. He also shows that it is God's will and full intent, and demands that they entertain joyful confidence in him against the natural fear and alarm And this is the natural voice of the Gospel which the prophet here begins to preach, as Christ speaks likewise in the Gospel and the apostles always admonish to rejoice in Christ, as we shall hear further on.


It is also full of meaning that he comes from the Mount of Olives. We shall notice that this grace on account of its greatness might be called a mountain of grace, a grace which is not only a drop or handful, but grace abundant and heaped up like a mountain.


32. He mentions the people twice while the Evangelist says only once, daughter of Zion. For it is one people, daughter of Zion and daughter of Jerusalem, namely the people of the same city, who believe in Christ and receive him. As I said before, the Evangelist quotes the Scriptures only briefly and invites us to read them ourselves and find out more there for ourselves. That the Evangelist does not invite to joy like the prophet, but simply says: Tell it to the daughter of Zion, he does it to show how the joy and exultation shall be carried on. None should expect bodily but spiritual joy, a joy that can be gathered alone from the Word by the faith of the heart. From a worldly aspect there was nothing joyful in Christ's en-

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trance, his spiritual advent must be preached and believed; that is, his meekness; this makes man joyful and glad.


33. That the prophet gives Christ three titles, lowly, just, and having salvation, while the Evangelist has only one, meek, is again done for brevity's sake, he suggests more than he explains. It seems to me that the Holy Ghost led the apostles and evangelists to abbreviate passages of the Scriptures for the purpose that we might be kept close to the holy Scriptures, and not set a bad example to future exegetes, who make many words outside the Scriptures and thereby draw us secretly from the Scriptures to human doctrines. As to say: If I spread the Scriptures verbatim everyone will follow the example and it will come to pass that we would read more in other books than in the holy writings of the principal book, and there would be no end to the writing of books and we would be carried from one book to another, until, finally, we would get away from the holy Scriptures altogether, as has happened in fact. Hence, with such incomplete quotations he directs us to the original book where they can be found complete, so that there is no need for everyone to make a separate book and leave the first one.


34. We notice, therefore, that it is the intention of all the apostles and evangelists in the New Testament to direct and drive us to the Old Testament, which they call the Holy Scriptures proper. For the New Testament was to be only the incarnate living Word and not scripture. Hence Christ did not write anything himself, but gave the command to preach and extend the Gospel, which lay hidden in the Scriptures, as we shall hear on Epiphany Sunday.


35. In the Hebrew language the two words meek and lowly do not sound unlike, and mean not a poor man who is wanting in money and property, but who in his heart is humble and wretched, in whom truly no anger nor haughtiness is to be found, but meekness and sympathy. And if we wish to obtain the full meaning of this word, we must take it as Luke uses it, who describes how Christ at his entrance wept and wailed over Jerusalem.


We interpret therefore the words lowly and meek in the

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light of Christ's conduct. How does he appear? His heart is full of sorrow and compassion toward Jerusalem. There is no anger or revenge, but he weeps out of tenderness at their impending doom.. None was so bad that he did or wished him harm. His sympathy makes him so kind and full of pity that he thinks not of anger, of haughtiness, of threatening or revenge, but offers boundless compassion and good will. This is what the prophet calls lowly and the Evangelist meek. Blessed he who thus knows Christ in him and believes in him. He cannot be afraid of him, but has a true and comforting confidence in him and entrance to him. He does not try to find fault either, for as he believes, he finds it; these words do not lie nor deceive.


36. The word "just" does not mean here the justice with which God judges, which is called the severe justice of God. For if Christ came to us with this who could stand before him.? Who could receive him, since even the saints cannot endure it? The joy and grace of this entrance would thereby be changed info the greatest fear and terror. But that grace is meant, by which he makes us just or righteous. I wish the word justus, justitia, were not used for the severe judicial justice; for originally it means godly, godliness. When we say, he is a pious man, the Scriptures express it, he is justus, justified or just. But the severe justice of God is called in the Scriptures: Severity, judgment, tribunal.


The prophet's meaning, therefore, is this: Thy king cometh to thee pious or just, i.e., he comes to make you godly through himself and his grace; he knows well that you are not godly. Your piety should consist not in your deeds, but in his grace and gift, so that you are just and godly through him. In this sense St. Paul speaks, Rom. 3, 26: "That he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus." That is, Christ alone is pious before God and he alone makes us pious. Also, Rom. 1, 17: "For therein is revealed a righteousness of God from faith unto faith," that is the godliness of God, namely his grace and mercy, by which he makes us godly before him, is preached in the Gospel. You see in this verse from the prophet that Christ is preached for us unto righteous-

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ness, that he comes godly and just, and we become godly and just by faith.


37. Note this fact carefully, that when you find in the Scriptures the word God's justice, it is not to be understood of the self-existing, imminent justice of God, as the Papists and many of the fathers held, lest you be frightened; but, according to the usage of Holy Writ, it means the revealed grace and mercy of God through Jesus Christ in us by means of which we are considered godly and righteous before him. Hence it is called God's justice or righteousness effected not by us, but by God through grace, just as God's work, God's wisdom, God's strength, God's word, God's mouth, signifies what he works and speaks in us. All this is demonstrated clearly by St. Paul, Rom. 1, 16: "1 am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ; for it is the power of God (which works in us and strengthens us) unto salvation to everyone that believeth. For therein is revealed a righteousness of God," as it is written in Hab. 2, 4: "The righteous shall live by his faith." Here you see that he speaks of the righteousness of faith and calls the same the righteousness of God, preached in the Gospel, since the Gospel teaches nothing else but that he who believes has grace and is righteous before God and is saved.


In the same manner you should understand Ps. 31, 1: "Deliver me in thy righteousness," i.e. by thy grace, which makes me godly and righteous. The word Saviour or Redeemer compels us to accept this as the meaning of the little word "just." For if Christ came with his severe justice he would not save anyone, but condemn all, as they are all sinners and unjust. But now he comes to make not only just and righteous, but also blessed, all who receive him, that he alone as the just one and the Saviour be offered graciously to all sinners out of unmerited kindness and righteousness.


38. When the Evangelist calls his steed a burden-bearing and working foal of an ass he describes the animal the prophets mean. He wants to say: The prophecy is fulfilled in this burden-bearing animal. It was not a special animal trained for this purpose, as according to the country's custom riding animals are trained, and when the prophet speaks of the foal

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of the ass it is his meaning that it was a colt, but not a colt of a horse.


II. CONCERNING GOOD WORKS.


39. We have said enough of faith. We now come to consider good works. We receive Christ not only as a gift by faith, but also as an example of love toward our neighbor, whom we are to serve as Christ serves us. Faith brings and gives Christ to you with all his possessions. Love gives you to your neighbor with all your possessions. These two things constitute a true and complete Christian life; then follow suffering and persecution for such faith and love, and out of these grows hope in patience.


40. You ask, perhaps, what are the good works you are to do to your neighbor? Answer: They have no name. As the good works Christ does to you have no name, so your good works are to have no name.


41. Whereby do you know them? Answer: They have no name, so that there may be no distinction made and they be not divided, that you might do some and leave others undone. You shall give yourself up to him altogether, with all you have, the same as Christ did not simply pray or fast for you. Prayer and fasting are not the works he did for you, but he gave himself up wholly to you, with praying, fasting, all works and suffering, so that there is nothing in him that is not yours and was not done for you. Thus it is not your good work that you give alms or that you pray, but that you offer yourself to your neighbor and serve him, wherever he needs you and every way you can, be it with alms, prayer, work, fasting, counsel, comfort, instruction, admonition, punishment, apologizing, clothing, food, and lastly with suffering and dying for him. Pray, where are now such works to be found in Christendom?


42. I wish to God I had a voice like a thunderbolt, that I might preach to all the world, and tear the word "good works" out of people's hearts, mouths, ears, books, or at least then the right understanding of it. All the world sings, speaks, writes and thinks of good works, everyone wishes to exercise themselves in good works, and yet, good works are

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done nowhere, no one has the right understanding of good works. Oh, that all such pulpits in all the world were cast into the fire and burned to ashes! How they mislead people with their good works! They call good works what God has not commanded, as pilgrimages, fasting, building and decorating their churches in honor of the saints, saying mass, paying for vigils, praying with rosaries, much prattling and bawling in churches, turning nun, monk, priest, using special food, raiment or dwelling,-who can enumerate all the horrible abominations and deceptions? This is the pope's government and holiness.


43. If you have ears to hear and a mind to observe, pray, listen and learn for God's sake what good works are and mean. A good work is good for the reason that it is useful and benefits and helps the one for whom it is done; why else should it be called good! For there is a difference between good works and great, long, numerous, beautiful works. When you throw a big stone a great distance it is a great work, but whom does it benefit? If you can jump, run, fence well, it is a fine work, but whom does it benefit? Whom does it help, if you wear a costly coat or build a fine house?


44. And to come to our Papists' work, what does it avail if they put silver or gold on the walls, wood and stone in the churches? Who would be made better, if each village had ten bells, as big as those at Erfurt? Whom would it help if all the houses were convents and monasteries as splendid as the temple of Solomon? Who is benefitted if you fast for St. Catherine, St. Martin or any other saint? Whom does it benefit, if you are shaved half or wholly, if you wear a gray or a black cap? Of what use were it if all people field mass every hour? What benefit is it if in one church, as at Meissen, they sing day and night Without interruption? Who is better for it, if every church had more silver, pictures and jewelry than the churches of Halle and Wittenberg? It is folly and deception, men's lies invented these things and called them good works; they all pretend they serve God thus and pray for the people and their sins, just as if they helped God with their property or as if his saints were in need of our work. Sticks and stones

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are not as rude and mad as we are. A tree bears fruit, not for itself, but for the good of man and beast, and these fruits are its good works.


45. Hear then how Christ explains good works, Math. 7, 12: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye unto them; for this is the law and the prophets." Do you hear now what are the contents of the whole law and of all the prophets? You are not to do good to God and to his dead saints, they are not in need of it; still less to wood and stone, to which it is of no use, nor is it needed, but to men, to men, to men. Do you not hear? To men you should do everything that you would they should do to you.


46. I would not have you build me a church or tower or cast bells for me. I would not have you construct for me an organ with fourteen stops and ten rows of flute work. Of this I can neither eat nor drink, support neither wife nor child, keep neither house nor land. You may feast my eyes on these and tickle my ears, but what shall I give to my children? Where are the necessaries of life? 0 madness, madness! The bishops and lords, who should check it, are the first in such folly, and one blind leader leads the other. Such people remind me of young girls playing with dolls and of boys riding on sticks. Indeed, they are nothing but children and players with dolls, and riders of hobbyhorses.


47. Keep in mind, that you need not do any work for God nor for the departed saints, but you ask and receive good from him in faith. Christ has done and accomplished everything for you, atoned for your sins, secured grace and life and salvation. Be content with this, only think how he can become more and more your own and strengthen your faith. Hence direct all the good you can do and your whole life to the end that it be good; but it is good only when it is useful to other people and not to yourself. You need it not, since Christ has done and given for you all that you might seek and desire for yourself, here and hereafter, be it forgiveness of sins, merit of salvation or whatever it may be called. If you find a work in you by which you benefit God or his saints or yourself and not your neighbor, know that such a work is not good.

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48. A man is to live, speak, act, hear, suffer and die for the good of his wife and child, the wife for the husband, the children for the parents, the servants for their masters, the masters for their servants, the government for its subjects, the subjects for the government, each one for his fellow man, even for his enemies, so that one is the other's hand, mouth, eye, foot, even heart and mind. This is a truly Christian and good work, which can and shall be done at all times, in all places, toward all people. You notice the Papists' works in organs, pilgrimages, fasting, etc., are really beautiful, great, numerous, long, wide and heavy works, but there is no good, useful and helpful work among them and the proverb may be applied to them: It is already bad.


49. But beware of their acute subtleties, when they say: If these works are not good to our neighbor in his body, they do spiritual good to his soul, since they serve God and propitiate him and secure his grace. Here it is time to say: You lie as wide as your mouth. God is to be worshiped not with works, but by faith, faith must do everything that is to be done between God and us. There may be more faith in a millerboy than in all the Papists, and it may gain more than all priests and monks do with their organs and jugglery, even if they had more organs than these now have pipes. He who has faith can pray for his fellow man, he who has no faith can pray for nothing.


It is a satanic lie to call such outward pomp spiritually good and useful works. A miller's maid, if she believes, does more good, accomplishes more, and I would trust her more, if she takes the sack from the horse, than all the priests and monks, if they kill themselves singing day and night and torment themselves to the quick. You great, coarse fools, would you expect to help the people with your faithless life and distribute spiritual goods, when there is on earth no more miserable, needy, godless people than you are? You should be called, not spiritual, but spiritless.


50. Behold, such good works Christ teaches here by his example. Tell me what does he do to serve himself and to do good to himself? The prophet directs all to the daughter of

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Zion and says: "He cometh to thee," and that he comes as a Saviour, just and meek, is all for you, to make you just and blessed. None had asked nor bidden him to come; but he came, he comes of his own free will, out of pure love, to do good and to be useful and helpful.


Now his work is manifold, it embraces all that is necessary to make us just and blessed. But justification and salvation imply that he delivers us from sin, death, hell, and does it not only for his friends, but also for his enemies, yea, for none but his enemies, yet he does it so tenderly, that he weeps over those who oppose such work and will not receive him. Hence he leaves nothing undone to blot out their sin, conquer death and hell and make them just and blessed. He retains nothing for himself, and is content that he already has God and is blessed, -thus he serves only us according to the will of his father who wishes him to do so.


51. See then how he keeps the law: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye unto them." Is it not true, everyone heartily wishes that another might step between man and his sin, take it upon himself and blot it out, so that it would no more sting his conscience, and deliver him from death and hell? What does everyone desire more deeply than to be free from death and hell? Who would not be free from sin and have a good, joyful conscience before God? Do we not see how all men have striven for this, with prayer, fastings, pilgrimages, donations, monasteries and priestdom? Who urges them? It is sin, death, hell, from which they would be saved. And if there were a physician at the end of the world, who could help here, all lands would become deserted and every one would hasten to this physician and risk property, body and life to make the journey.


And if Christ himself, like we, were surrounded by death, sin and hell, he would wish that some one would help him out of it, take his sin away and give him a good conscience. Since he would have others do this for him, he proceeds and does it for others, as the law says, he takes upon himself our sins, goes into death and overcomes for us sin, death and hell so that henceforth all who believe in him, and call upon his name,

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shall be justified and saved, be above sin and death, have a good, joyful, secure and intrepid conscience forever, as he says in John 8, 51: "If a man keep my word, he shall never see death," and John 11,25-26: "I am the resurrection, and the life; he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live I and whosoever liveth and believeth on me, shall never die."


52. Behold, this is the great joy, to which the prophet invites, when he says: "Rejoice greatly, 0 daughter of Zion; shout, 0 daughter of Jerusalem!" This is the righteousness and the salvation for which the Saviour and King comes. These are the good works done for us by which he fulfills the law. Hence the death of the believer in Christ is not death but a sleep, for he neither sees nor tastes death, as is said in Ps. 4, 8: "In peace will I both lay me down and sleep, for thou, Jehovah, alone makest me dwell in safety." Therefore death is also called a sleep in the Scriptures.


53. But the Papists and their disciples, who would get rid of death, sin and hell by their own works and satisfaction, must remain in them eternally for they undertake to do for themselves what Christ alone did and could do, of whom they should expect it by faith. Therefore they are foolish, deluded people who do works for Christ and his saints, which they should do for their neighbor. Again, what they should expect of Christ by faith they would find in themselves and have gone so far as to spend on stone and wood, on bells and incense what they should spend on their neighbors. They go on and do good to God and his saints, fast for them and dedicate to them prayers, and at the same time leave their neighbor as he is, thinking only, let us first help ourselves! Then comes the pope and sells them his letter of indulgence and leads them into heaven, not into God's heaven, but into the pope's heaven, which is the abyss of hell. Behold, this is the fruit of unbelief and ignorance of Christ, this is our reward for having left the Gospel in obscurity and setting up human doctrine in its place. I repeat it, I wish all pulpits in the world lay in ashes, and the monasteries, convents, churches, hermitages and chapels, and everything were ashes and powder, because of this shameful misleading of souls.

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54. Now you know what good works are. Think of it and act accordingly. As to sin, death and hell, take care that you augment them not, for you cannot do anything here, your good works will avail nothing, you must have some one else to work for you. To Christ himself such works properly belong, you must consent to it that he who comes is the king of Zion, that he alone is the just Saviour. In him and through him you will blot out sin and death through faith. Therefore, if anyone teaches you to blot out your own sin by works, beware of him.


55. When in opposition to this they quote verses of the Bible like Dan. 4, 27: "Break off thine iniquities by showing mercy to the poor," and I Pet. 4, 8: "Love covereth a multitude of sins," and the like, be not deceived, such passages do not mean that the works could blot out or remove sin, for this would rob Christ of his word and advent, and do away with his whole work; but these works are a sure work of faith, which in Christ receives remission of sins and the victory over death. For it is impossible for him who believes in Christ, as a just Saviour, not to love and to do good. If, however, he does not do good nor love, it is sure that faith is not present. Therefore man knows by the fruits what kind of a tree it is, and it is proved by love and deed whether Christ is in him and he believes in Christ. As St. Peter says in 2 Pet. 1, 10: "Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure; for if ye do these things, ye shall never stumble," that is, if you bravely practice good works you will be sure and cannot doubt that God has called and chosen you.


56. Thus faith blots out sin in a different manner than love. Faith blots it out of itself, while love or good works prove and demonstrate that faith has done so and is present, as St. Paul says, 1 Cor. 13, 2: "And if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing." Why? Without doubt, because faith is not present where there is no love, they are not separate the one from the other. See to it then that you do not err, and be misled from faith to works.

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57. Good works should be done, but we should not confide in them, instead of in Christ's work. We should not touch sin, death and hell with our works, but direct them from us to the Saviour, to the king of Zion, who rides upon an ass. He who knows how to treat sin, death and hell, will blot out sin, overcome death, and subdue hell. Do you permit him to perform these works while you serve your neighbor,-you will then have a sure testimony of faith in the Saviour who overcame death. So love and good works will blot out your sin for you that you may realize it; as faith blots it out before God where you do not realize it. But more of this later.


THE LESSON STORY AND THE FALSE NOTIONS THE JEWS HELD CONCERNING THE MESSIAH.


58. In the story of this Gospel we will first direct our attention to the reason why the Evangelist quotes the words of the prophet, in which was described long ago and in clear, beautiful and wonderful words, the bodily, public entrance and advent of our Lord Jesus Christ to the people of Zion or Jerusalem, as the text says. In this the prophet wanted to show and explain to his people and to all the world, who the Messiah is and how and in what manner he would come and manifest himself, and offers a plain and visible sign in this that he says: "Behold, thy king cometh unto thee, meek, and riding upon an ass," etc., so that we would be certain of it, and not dispute about the promised Messiah or Christ, nor wait for another.


He therewith anticipates the mistaken idea of the Jews, who thought, because there were such glorious things said and written of Christ and his kingdom, he would manifest himself in great worldly pomp and glory, as a king against their enemies, especially the Roman empire, to the power of which they were subject, and would overthrow its power and might, and in their place set up the Jews as lords and princes. They thus expected nothing in the promised Christ but a worldly kingdom and deliverance from bodily captivity. Even today they cling to such dreams and therefore they do not believe in Christ, because they have not seen such bodily

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relief and worldly power. They were led to this notion, and strengthened in it, by their false priests, preachers and doctors, who perverted the Scriptures concerning Christ and interpreted them according to their own worldly understanding as referring to bodily, worldly things, because they would fain be great earthly lords.


59. But the dear prophets plainly foretold and faithfully gave warning that we should not think of such an earthly kingdom nor of bodily salvation, but look back and pay attention to the promises of a spiritual kingdom and of a redemption from the pernicious fall of mankind in paradise; of which it is said in Gen. 2, 17: "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." The first prophecy of Christ is also against it, Gen. 3, 15: "The seed of woman shall bruise the serpent's head." Which means, he shall deliver all mankind from the power of the devil and the captivity of sin and eternal death and, instead bring justification before God and eternal life. Hence this prophet calls him "just and having salvation." This truly is a different salvation than that of bodily freedom, bodily power and glory, the end of which is death, and under which everything must abide eternally.


They ought to have considered this and rejoiced in it, since the prophets had heartily yearned and prayed for it, and this prophet admonishes to such great joy and gladness. But they and their shameless preachers made a temporal affair out of this misery and unhappiness, as if it were a joke about sin and death or the power of the devil, and considered it the greatest misfortune that they lost their temporal freedom and were made subject to the emperor and required to pay taxes to him.


60. The Evangelist therefore quotes this saying of the prophet, to punish the blindness and false notions of those who seek bodily and temporal blessings in Christ and his Gospel, and to convince them by the testimony of the prophet, who shows clearly what kind of a king Christ was and what they should seek in him, in that lie calls him just and having salvation and yet adds this sign of his coming by which they are to know him: "He cometh to thee meek and riding upon a colt,

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the foal of an ass." As if to say: A poor, miserable, almost beggarly horseman upon a borrowed ass who is kept by the side of its mother not for ostentation but for service. With this he desires to lead them away from gazing and waiting for a glorious entrance of a worldly king. And he offers such signs that they might not doubt the Christ, nor take offense at his beggarly appearance. All pomp and splendor are to be left out of sight, and the heart and the eyes directed to the poor rider, who became poor and miserable and made himself of no kingly reputation that they might not seek the things of this world in him but the eternal, as is indicated by the words, "just and having salvation."


61. This verse first clearly and effectively does away with the Jewish dream and delusion of a worldly reign of the Messiah and of their temporal freedom. It takes away all cause and support for excuse, if they do not receive Christ, and cuts off all hope and expectation for another, because it clearly and distinctly announces and admonishes that he would come on this wise and that he has fulfilled everything. We Christians thus have against the Jews a firm ground and certain title and conviction from their own Scripture that this Messiah, who thus came to them, is the Christ predicted by tile prophets and that no other shall come, and that in the vain hope of another's coming they forfeit their temporal and eternal salvation.

III. THE SPIRITUAL INTERPRETATION OF THIS GOSPEL

62. This has been said about the history of this Gospel. Let us now treat of its hidden or spiritual meaning. Here we are to remember that Christ's earthly walk and conversation signify his spiritual walk; his bodily walk therefore signifies the Gospel and the faith. As with his bodily feet he walked from one town to another, so by preaching he came into the world. Hence this lesson shows distinctly what the Gospel is and how it is to be preached, what it does and effects in the world, and its history is a fine, pleasing picture and image of

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how the kingdom of Christ is carried on by the office of preaching. We will consider this point by point.

"And when they drew nigh unto Jerusalem, and came unto Bethphage, unto the Mount of Olives."

63. All the apostles declare that Christ would become man at the end of the world, and that the Gospel would be the last preaching, as is written in 1 John 2, 18: "Little children, it is the last hour, and as ye have heard that Antichrist cometh, even now hath there arisen many Antichrists; whereby we know that it is the last hour," etc. He mentions here the Antichrist. Antichrist in Greek means he who teaches and acts against the true Christ. Again, 1 Cor. 10, 11: "All these things were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come." As the prophets came to man before the first advent of Christ, so the apostles are the last messengers of God, sent before the last advent of Christ at the last day to preach it faithfully. Christ indicates this by not sending out his apostles to fetch the ass, until he drew nigh unto Jerusalem, where he was now to enter. Thus the Gospel is brought into this world by the apostles shortly before the last day, when Christ will enter with his flock into the eternal Jerusalem.

64. This agrees with the word "Bethphage," which means, as some say, mouth-house, for St. Paul says in Rom. 1, 2, that the Gospel was promised afore in the Holy Scriptures, but it was not preached orally and publicly until Christ came and sent out his apostles. Therefore the church is a mouth-house, not a pen-house, for since Christ's advent that Gospel is preached orally which before was hidden in written books.

It is the way of the Gospel and of the New Testament that it is to be preached and discussed orally with a living voice. Christ himself wrote nothing, nor did he give command to write, but to preach orally. Thus the apostles were not sent out until Christ came to his mouth-house, that is, until the time had come to preach orally and to bring the Gospel from dead writing and pen-work to the living voice and mouth. From this time the church is rightly called Bethphage, since she has and bears the living voice of the Gospel.

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65. The sending shows that the kingdom of Christ is contained in the public oral office of preaching, which shall not stand still nor remain in one place, as before it was hidden with the Jewish nation alone in the Scriptures and foretold by the prophets for the future, but should go openly, free and untrammeled into all the world.

66. The Mount of Olives signifies the great mercy and grace of God, that sent forth the apostles and brought the Gospel to us. Olive oil in Holy Writ signifies the grace and mercy of God, by which the soul and the conscience are comforted and healed, as the oil soothes and softens and heals the wounds and defects of the body. And from what was said above, we learn what unspeakable grace it is that we know and have Christ, the justified Saviour and king. Therefore he does not send into the level plain, nor upon a deserted, rocky mountain, but unto the Mount of Olives, to show to all the world the mercy which prompted him to such grace. There is not simply a drop or handful of it, as formerly, but because of its great abundance it might be called a mountain. The prophet also calls in Ps. 36, 6, such grace God's mountain and says: "Thy righteousness is like the mountains of God," that is, great and abundant, rich and overflowing. This he can understand who considers what it means that Christ bears our sin, and conquers death and hell and does everything for us, that is necessary to our salvation. He does not expect us to do anything for it, but to exercise it towards our neighbor, to know thereby whether we have such faith in Christ or not. Hence the Mount of Olives signifies that the Gospel was not preached nor sent until the time of grace came; from this time on the great grace goes out into the world through the apostles.

"Then Jesus sent two disciples, saying unto them, Go into the village that is over against you."

67. These two disciples represent all the apostles and preachers, sent into the world. The evangelical sermon is to consist of two witnesses, as St. Paul says in Rom. 3,21: "A righteousness of God has been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets." Thus we see how the apostles

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introduce the law and the prophets, who prophesied of Christ, so that it might be fulfilled that Moses spoke in Deut. 17, 6 and Christ in Math. 18,16: "At the mouth of two witnesses or three, every word may be established."

68. When he says: "Go into the village over against you", not mentioning the name, it signifies that the apostles are not sent to one nation alone, as the Jews were separated from the Gentiles and alone bore the name "People of God" and God's word and promise of the future Messiah were with them alone. But now when Christ comes he sends his preachers into all the world and commands them to go straight forward and preach everywhere to all the heathen, and to teach, reprove, without distinction, whomsoever they meet, however great, and wise and learned and holy, they may be.

When he calls the great city of Jerusalem a village and does not give her name, he does it for the reason that the name Jerusalem has a holy significance. The kingdom of heaven and salvation are the spiritual Jerusalem, that Christ enters. But the apostles were sent into the world amongst their enemies who have no name.

69. The Lord here comforts and strengthens the apostles and all ministers, when he calls the great city a village, and adds, she is over against you. As if he would say, like Math. 10, 16: "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of the wolves", I send you into the world, which is against you, and seems to be something great, for there are kings, princes, the learned, the rich and everything that is great in the world and amounts to anything, this is against you. And as he says in Math. 10, 22: "Ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake." But never fear, go on, it is hardly a village, do not be moved by great appearances, preach bravely against it and fear no one. For it is not possible that he should preach the gospel truth, who fears the multitude and does not despise all that the world esteems highly. It is here decreed that this village is against the apostles, therefore they should not be surprised if the great, high, rich, wise and holy orders do not accept their word. It must be so, the village must be against them; again, the apostles must despise them and appear before

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them, for the Lord will have no flatterer as a preacher. He does not say: Go around the village, or to the one side of it: Go in bravely and tell them what they do not like to hear.

70. How very few there are now who enter the village that is against them. We gladly go into the towns that are on our side. The Lord might have said: Go ye into the village before you. That would have been a pleasing and customary form of speech. But he would indicate this mystery of the ministry, hence he speaks in an unusual way: Go into the village that is over against you. That is: Preach to them that are disposed to prosecute and kill you. You shall merit such thanks and not try to please them, for such is the way of hypocrites and not that of the evangelists.

"And straightway ye shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her; loose them and bring them unto me."

71. This is also offered as consolation to ministers that they should not worry as to who would believe or receive them. For it is decreed, Is. 55,11: "My word shall not return unto me void." And St. Paul says, Col. 1, 6: "The Gospel is in all the world bearing fruit." It cannot be otherwise than that where the Gospel is preached there will be some, who accept it and believe. This is the meaning of the mystery that the apostles shall find the ass forthwith and the colt, if they only go. As if he would say: Only go and preach, care not who they are that hear you. I will care for that. The world will be against you, but be not afraid, you will find such as will hear and follow you. You do not know them yet, but I know them; you preach, and leave the rest to me.

72. Behold, In this way he consoles them that they should not cease to preach against the world, though it withstands and contradicts them ever so hard, it shall not be in vain. You find people now who believe we should be silent and cause no stir, because it is impossible to convert the world. It is all in vain, they say; pope, priests, bishops and monks reject it and they will not change their lives, what is the use to preach and storm against them? This is the same as if the apostles had said to Christ: Thou tellest us to go into the village that

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is over against us; it it is against us, what use is it that we enter there, let us rather stay outside.

But the Lord refutes this and says: Go ye there and preach, what does it matter if it is against you? You will find there what I say. We should now do likewise. Although the masses storm against the Gospel and there is no hope that they will be better, yet we must preach, there will yet be found those who listen and become converted.

73. Why does he have them bring two asses or not both young or old ones, since one was enough for him to ride upon? Answer: As the two disciples represent the preachers, so the colt and its mother represent their disciples and hearers. The preachers shall be Christ's disciples and be sent by him, that is, they should preach nothing but Christ's doctrine. Nor should they go to preach except they be called, as was the case with the apostles. But the hearers are old and young.

74. Here we should remember that man in Holy Writ is divided into two parts, in an inner and an outer man. The outer man is called according to his outward, visible, bodily life and conversation; the inner man, according to his heart and conscience. The outer man can be forced to do the good and quit the bad, by law, pain, punishment and shame, or attracted by favor, money, honor and reward. But the inner man cannot be forced to do out of his own free will, what he should do, except the grace of God change the heart and make it willing.

Hence the Scriptures say all men are liars, no man does good of his own free will, but everyone seeks his own and does nothing out of love for virtue. For if there were no heaven nor hell, no disgrace nor honor, none would do good. If it were as great an honor and prize to commit adultery, as to honor matrimony, you would see adultery committed with much greater pleasure than matrimony is now held sacred. In like manner all other sins would be done with greater zeal than virtues are now practiced. Hence all good conduct without grace is mere glitter and semblance, it touches only the exterior man, without the mind and free will of the inner man being reached.

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75. These are the two asses: The old one is the exterior man; he is bound like this one, with laws and fear of death, of hell, of shame, or with allurements of heaven, of life, of honor. He goes forward with the external appearance of good works and is a pious rogue, but he does it unwillingly and with a heavy heart and a heavy conscience.

Therefore the apostle calls her "subjugalem," the yoked animal, who works under a burden and labors hard. It is a miserable, pitiable life that is under compulsion by fear of hell, of death and of shame. Hell, death and shame are his yoke and burden, heavy beyond measure, from which he has a burdened conscience and is secretly an enemy to law and to God. Such people were the Jews, who waited for Christ, and such are all who rely upon their own power to fulfil God's commands, and merit heaven. They are tied by their consciences to the law, they must, but would rather not, do it. They are carriers of sacks, lazy beasts of burden and yoked rogues.

713. The colt, the young ass, of which Mark and Luke write, on which never man rode, is the inner man, the heart, the mind, the will, which can never be subject to law, even if he be tied by conscience and feels the law. But he has no desire nor love for it until Christ comes and rides on him. As this colt was never ridden by anyone, so man's heart has never been subject to the good; but, as Moses says, Gen. 6, 5 and 8, 21, is evil continually from his youth.

77. Christ tells them to loose them, that is, he tells them to preach the Gospel in his name, in which is proclaimed grace and remission of sins, and how he fulfilled the law for us. The heart is here freed from the fetters of conscience and things. Thus man is loose not from the law, that he should and joyful, willing and anxious to do and to leave undone all things. Thus man is loose not from the Law, that he should do nothing, but from a joyless, heavy conscience he has from the law, and with which he was the enemy of the law, that threatens him with death and hell. Now he has a clear conscience under Christ, is a friend of the law, neither fears death nor hell, does freely and willingly, what before he did

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reluctantly. See, in this way the Gospel delivers the heart from all evil, from sin and death, from hell and a bad conscience through faith in Christ.

78. When he commands them to bring them to him, he speaks against the pope and all sects and deceivers, who lead the souls from Christ to themselves; but the apostles bring them to Christ; they preach and teach nothing but Christ, and not their own doctrine nor human laws. The Gospel alone teaches us to come to Christ and to know Christ rightly. In this the stupid prelates receive a heavy rebuke at their system of bringing souls to themselves, as Paul says in Acts 20, 29-30: "1 know that after my departing grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock; and from among your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them." But the Gospel converts men to Christ and to none else. Therefore he sends out the Gospel and ordains preachers, that he may draw us all to himself, that we may know him as he says, John 12, 32: "And I, if I be lifted tip from the earth, will draw all men unto myself."

"And if any man say aught unto you, ye shall say., The Lord hath need of them; and straightway he will send them."

79. St. Paul, in Gal. 4, 2, compares the law to guardians and stewards, under whom the young heir is educated in fear and discipline. The law forces with threats that we externally abstain from evil works, from fear of death and hell, although the heart does not become good thereby. Here are, as Luke writes, the masters of the ass and its colt, speaking to the apostles: What, do ye loose the colt? Where the Gospel begins to loose the conscience of its own works, it seems to forbid good works and the keeping of the law. It is the common speech of all the teachers of the law, and of the scribes and doctors, to say: If all our works amount to nothing and if the works done under the law are evil, we will never (to good. You forbid good works and throw away God's law; you heretic, you loose the colt and wish to make bad people free. Then they go to work and forbid to loose the colt and

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the conscience and to bring it to Christ and say, You must do good works, and keep people tied in bondage to the law.

80. Our text shows how the apostles should act toward such persons. They should say: "The Lord hath need of them," they should instruct them in the works of the law and the works of grace and should say: We forbid not good works, but we loose the conscience from false good works, not to make them free to do evil deeds, but to come under Christi their true Master, and under him do truly good works; to this end he needs them and will have them. Of this Paul treats so well in Rom. 6, where he teaches that through grace we are free from the law and its works; not so as to do evil, but to do truly good works.

81. It all amounts to this, that the scribes and masters of the law do not know what good works are; they therefore will not loose the colt, but drive it with unmerciful human works. However, where wholesome instruction is given concerning good works, they let it pass, if they are at all sensible and honest teachers of the law, as they are here represented. The mad tyrants, who are frantic with human laws, are not mentioned in this Gospel. It treats only of the law of God and of the very best teachers of the law. For without grace, even God's law is a chain and makes burdened consciences and hypocrites whom none can help, until other works are taught, which are not ours, but Christ's and are worked in us by grace. Then all constraint and coercion of the law is ended and the colt is loose.

"Now this is come to pass, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken through the prophet,* saying, Tell ye the daughter of Zion."

82. This verse has already been sufficiently explained. The Evangelist introduces it that we may see how Christ has come not for the sake of our merits, but for the sake of God's truth. For he was prophesied long a- before we, to whom go he comes, bad a being. God out of pure grace has fulfilled the promises of the Gospel to demonstrate the truth that he keeps his promises in order to stir us confidently to trust in his promise, for he will fulfil it.

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And this is one of the passages, where the Gospel is promised, of which Paul speaks in Rom. 1, 2: "Which he promised afore through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures, concerning his Son Jesus Christ," etc. We have heard how in this verse the Gospel, Christ and faith are preached most distinctly and consolingly.

'And the disciples went, and did even as Jesus appointed them, and brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their garments, and he sat thereon, (and they set him thereon.)"

83. These are the ministers who by the Gospel have freed the consciences from the law and its works and led them to the works of grace, who made real saints out of* hypocrites, so that Christ henceforth rides upon them.

84. The question arises here, whether Christ rode upon both animals. Matthew- speaks as if the disciples put him on both, while Mark, Luke and John mention only the colt. Some think be sat first on the colt and, because it was too wanton and untamed, lie then sat on its mother. These are fables and dreams. ',Ale take it that he rode only on the colt. He had them both brought to him on account of the spiritual significance above mentioned. When Matthew says he sat on them as though he rode on both, it is said after the manner of the Scriptures and the common way of speaking by synecdoche, where a thing is ascribed to the community, the whole people, which applies only to a few of them; for example, Matthew writes: the thieves on the cross reviled him, while only one did it, as Luke tells us, Christ says in Mat. 23, 37, that the city of Jerusalem stoned the prophets, while only a few of the city did it. You say, the Turks killed the Christians, although they killed only a few. Thus Christ rode on the asses, though he rode only on the colt, because the two are compared to a community. What happened to one is expressed as if it happened to all.

85. Now consider the spiritual riding. Christ rides on the colt, its mother follows, that is, when Christ lives through faith in the inner man we are tinder him and are ruled by him But the outer man, the ass, goes free, Christ does not ride on her, though she follows in the rear. The outer man, as

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Paul says, is not willing, he strives against the inner man, nor does he carry Christ, as Gal. 5, 17 says: "The flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are contrary, the one to the other; that ye may not do the things that ye would." Because the colt carries Christ, that is, the Spirit is willing by grace, the ass, that is, the flesh, must be led by the halter, for the Spirit -,chastises and crucifies the flesh, so that it becomes subject.

86. This is the reason Christ rides upon the colt and not upon its mother, and yet uses both for his entrance into Jerusalem, for both body and soul must be saved. If, here upon earth, the body is unwilling, not capable of grace and Christ's leading, it must bear the Spirit, upon which Christ rides, who trains it and leads it along by the power of grace, received through Christ. The colt, ridden by Christ, upon which no one ever rode, is the willing spirit, whom no one before could make willing, tame or ready, save Christ by his grace. However, the sack-carrier, the burden-bearer, the old Adam, is the flesh, which goes riderless without Christ; it must for this reason bear the cross and remain a beast of burden.

87. What does it signify that the apostles, without command, put their garments on the colt? No doubt again not all the disciples laid on their garments, nor were all their garments put on, perhaps only a coat of one disciple. But it is written for the spiritual meaning, as if all the garments of all the disciples were used. It was a poor saddle and ornaments, but rich in meaning. I think it was the good example of the apostles, by which the Christian church is covered, and adorned, and Christ is praised and honored, namely, their preaching and confession, suffering and death for Christ's sake, as Christ says of Peter, that he would glorify God by a like death, John 21, 19. Paul says in one of his epistles, we shall put on, Christ, by which he doubtless wishes to show that good works are the garments of the Christians, by which Christ is honored and glorified before all people. In the epistle Paul says, Rom. 13, 12: "Let us put on the armor of light." By this he means to show that good works are garments in which we walk before the people, honorably and well

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adorned. The examples of the apostles are the best and noblest above all the saints, they instruct us best, and teach Christ most clearly; therefore they should not, like the rest, lie on the road, but on the colt, so that Christ may ride on them and the colt go under them. We should follow these examples, praise Christ with our confession and our life and adorn and honor the doctrine of the Gospel as Tit. 2, 10 says.

88. Hear how Paul lays his garments on the colt, I Cor. 11, 1: "Be ye imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ," and Heb. 13, 7: "Remember them that had the rule over you, men that spake unto you the Word of God; and considering the issue of their life, imitate their faith." No saint's example is as pure in faith as that of the apostles. All the other saints after the apostles have an addition of human doctrine and works. Hence Christ sits upon their garments to show that they are true Christian and more faithful examples than others.

89. That they set him thereon must also signify something. Could he not mount for himself? Why does he act so formal? As I said above, the apostles would not preach themselves, nor ride on the colt themselves. Paul says, 2 Cor. 1, 24: "Not that we have lordship over your faith." And 2 Cor. 4, 5: "We preach not ourselves, 'hut Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake." Again, 1 Pet. 5, 3: "Neither as lording it over the charge allotted to you." They preached to us the pure faith and offered their examples, that Christ might rule in us, and our faith remain undefiled, that we might not receive their word and work as if it were their own, but that we might learn Christ in their words and works. But how is it today? One follows St. Francis, another St Dominic, the third this, and the fourth that saint; and in none is Christ alone and pure faith sought; for they belong only to the apostles.

"And the most part of the multitude spread their garments in the way; and others cut branches front the trees, and spread them in the way."

90. The garments are the examples of the patriarchs and prophets, and the histories of the Old Testament. For, as we ,;hall learn, the multitude that went before, signifies the saints

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before tile birth of Christ, by whom the sermon in the New Testament and the way of faith are beautifully adorned and honored. Paul does likewise when he cites Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Peter cites Sarah, and, in Heb. It, many patriarchs are named as examples, and by these are confirmed faith and the works of faith in a masterly way. The branches mean the sayings of the prophets, one of which is mentioned in this Gospel, which are not stories nor examples but the prophecy of God. The trees are the books of the prophets. Those who preach from these cut down branches and spread them in the way of Christian faith.

91. All this teaches the character of an Evangelical sermon, a sermon on the pure faith and the way of life. It must first have the word Christ commands the apostles, saying: Go, loose and bring hither. Then the story and example of the apostles must be added which agree with Christ's word and work, these are the garments of the apostles. Then must be cited passages from the Old Testament, these are the garments and branches of the multitude. In this way the passages and examples of both Testaments are brought home to the people. Of this Christ speaks in Math. 13, 52: "Every scribe who hath been made a disciple to tile kingdom of heaven, is like unto a man that is a householder, who bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old." This signifies the two lips of the mouth, the two points of a bishop's hat, the two ribbons on it and some other like figures. But now none of these is kept before the eyes, the devil through the Papists throws sulphur and pitch in the way, himself rides on the colt and banishes Christ.

92. To spread garments in the way, means that, following the example of the apostles, we should with our confession and our whole life, honor, adorn and grace Christ, by giving up all glory, wisdom and holiness of our own and bowing to Christ in simple faith; also that we turn everything we have, honor, goods, life, power and body to the glory and advancement of the Gospel and relinquish everything for the one thing needful. Kings and lords and the great, powerful and rich should serve Christ with their goods, honor and power;

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further the Gospel and for its sake abandon everything. The holy patriarchs, prophets and pious kings in the Old Testament did so by their examples. But now everything is turned around, especially among the papal multitudes, who usurp all honor and power against Christ and thus suppress the Gospel.

93. To cut branches from the trees and spread them in the way means also the office of preaching and the testimony of the Scriptures and the prophets concerning Christ. With this the sermon of Christ is to be confirmed and all the preaching directed to the end that Christ may be known and confessed by it. John writes in 12,13 that they took branches of palmtrees and went forth to meet him. Some add, there must have been olive branches also, because it happened on the Mount of Olives. This is not incredible, although the Gospels do not report it.

94. There is reason why palm-branches and olive-branches are mentioned. They signify what is to be confessed, preached and believed concerning Christ. It is the nature of the palm-tree that when used as a beam, it yields to no weight but rises against the weight. These branches are the words of divine wisdom; the more they are suppressed, the higher they rise. This is true if you firmly believe in those words. There is an invincible power in them, so that they may well be called palm-branches, as St. Paul says in Rom. 1, 16: "The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that, believeth;" and as Christ says, "The gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Math. 16,18. Death, sin, hell and all evil must bend before the divine Word, or only rise, when it sets itself against them.

95. Olive branches are named, because they are words of grace, in which God has promised us mercy. They make the soul meek, gentle, joyful, as the oil does the body. The gracious Word and sweet Gospel is typified in Gen. 8, 11, where the dove in the evening brought in her mouth an olive branch with green leaves into the ark, which means, that the Holy Spirit brings the Gospel into the Church at the end of the world by the mouth of the apostles.

"And the multitudes that went before him, and that fol-

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lowed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the son of Daivd: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest."

96. For this reason they carried palm-trees before kings and lords, when they had gained a victor), and celebrated their triumph. Again, the carrying of palm-branches was a sign of submission, especially of such as asked for mercy and peace, as was commonly done among ancient people.

By their pomp before Christ they indicated that they would receive him as their Lord and King, sent by God as a victorious and invincible Saviour, showing themselves submissive to him and seeking grace from him. Christ should be preached and made known in all the world, as the victorious and invincible King against sin, death and the power of the devil and all the world for those who are oppressed and tormented, and as a Lord with whom they shall find abundant grace and mercy, as their faithful Priest and Mediator before God.

The word of the Gospel concerning this King is a word of mercy and grace, which brings us peace and redemption from God, besides invincible power and strength, as St. Paul in Rom. 1, 16 calls the Gospel "a power of God unto salvation" and "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it," as Christ says in Math. 16, 18.

97. Paul says, Heb. 13,8: "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yea, forever." All who will be saved from the beginning to the end of the world, are and must be Christians and must be saved by faith. Therefore Paul says, 1 Cor. 10, 3-4: "Our fathers did all eat the same spiritual food; and did all drink the same spiritual drink." And Christ says in John 8, 56: "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it and was glad."

98. Hence the multitudes going before signify all Christians and saints before Christ's birth; those who follow signify all the saints after the birth of Christ. They all believed in and adhered to the one Christ. The former expected him in the future, the latter received him as the one who had come. Hence they all sing the same song and praise and thank God

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in Christ. or may we give anything else but praise and thanks to God, since we receive all from him, be it grace, word, work, Gospel, faith and everything else. The only true Christian service is to praise and give thanks, as Ps. 50, 15 says: "Call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me."

99. What does "Hosanna to the son of David' signify? Hosanna in Ps. 118, 25-26, means: "Save now, we beseech thee, 0 Jehovah; 0 Jehovah, we beseech thee, send now prosperity. Blessed be he that cometh in the name of Jehovah." This verse was applied to Christ and is a well-wishing as we wish happiness and safety to a new ruler. Thus the people thought Christ should be their worldly king, and they wish him joy and happiness to that end. For Hosanna means: "0, give prosperity;" or: "Beloved, help;" or: "Beloved, save;" or whatever else you might desire to express in such a wish. They add: "To the son of David," and say: God give prosperity to the son of David! 0 God, give prosperity, blessed be," etc. We would say: 0, dear Lord, give happiness and prosperity to this son of David, for his new kingdom! Let him enter in God's name that he may be blessed and his kingdom prosper.

100. Mark proves clearly that they meant his kingdom when he writes expressly in Mark 11, 10, that they said: "Blessed is the kingdom that cometh, the kingdom of our father David: Hosanna in the highest." When some in the churches, read it "Osanna", it is not correct, it should be "Hosanna." They made a woman's name out of it, and her whom they should call Susanna they call Osanna. Susanna is a woman's name and means a rose. Finally, after making a farce out of baptism, the bishops baptize bells and altars, which is a great nonsense, and call the bells Osanna. But away with the blind leaders! We should learn here also to sing Hosanna and Hazelihana to the son of David together with those multitudes, that is, joyfully wish happiness and prosperity to the kingdom of Christ, to holy Christendom, that God may put away all human doctrine and let Christ alone be our king, who governs by his Gospel, and permits us to be his colts! God grant it, Amen.