He returns again and again to the belief, so deeply rooted in the heart, of the efficacy of good works in order that he may uproot it completely. The whole Christian system demands, he thinks, the condemnation of the importance attached hitherto to good works. “Thus the whole of Christianity consists in your holding fast to the Evangel, which Christ alone ordains and teaches, not to human words or works.”[1027] It is a “devil” who speaks to you of the meritorious power of works, “not indeed a black or painted devil, but a white devil, who, under a beautiful semblance of life, infuses into you the poison of eternal death.”[1028] Of the Christian who relies only on faith, he says, “Christ’s innocence becomes his innocence, and in the same way Christ’s piety, holiness and salvation become his, and all that is in Christ is contained in the believing heart together with Christ.”[1029] “But such faith is awakened in us by God. From it spring the works by which we assist and serve our neighbour.”[1030]
He speaks at considerable length in the last part of his sermons of the particular works which he considers allowable and commendable. How much he wished to imply may, however, be inferred from what has gone before.
Shall we not do good works? Shall we not pray any more, fast, found monasteries, become monks or nuns, or do similar works? The answer is: “There are two kinds of good works, some which are looked upon as good,” i.e. “our own self-chosen works,” such as “special fasting, special prayers, wearing a special dress or joining an Order.” “None of this is ordained by God,” and “Christian faith looks to nothing save Christ only,” therefore these works we must leave severely alone. There are, on the other hand, works which are better than these. “When once we have laid hold upon Christ, then good Christian works follow, such as God has commanded and which man performs not for his own advantage but in the service of his neighbour.” But even of these works Luther is careful to add that they should be performed “without placing any trust in them for justification.” “Fasting is a good work,” but then, “the devil himself does not eat too much,” and sometimes even “a Jew” fasts; “prayer is also a good work,” but it does not consist in “much mumbling or shouting,” and even “the Turk prays much with his lips.” “No one may or can bear the name of Christian except by the work of Christ.”[1031]
Thus, even where he is forced to admit good works, he must needs add a warning.
Finally, where he is exhorting to the patient bearing of crosses, he immediately, and most strangely, restricts this exercise of virtue to the limits of his own experience: One bears the cross when he is unjustly proclaimed “a heretic and evil-doer,” not “when he is sick in bed”; to bear the cross is to be “deprived of interior consolation,” and to be severely tried by “God’s hand and by His anger.”[1032]
In the new congregation at Erfurt it was a question of the very foundations of the moral life. Yet in Luther’s addresses we miss the necessary exhortations to a change of heart, to struggle against the passions and overcome sensuality. Neither is the sinner exhorted to repentance, penance, contrition, fear of God and a firm purpose of amendment, nor are the more zealous encouraged to the active exercise of the love of God, to self-denial according to the virtues of their state, or to sanctification by the use of those means which Luther still continued to recognise, at least to a certain extent, such as the Eucharist. All his exhortations merge into this one thing, trust in Christ. He preached, indeed, one part of the sermon of the Precursor, viz. “The Kingdom of God is at hand”; with the other: “Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of penance,” he would have nothing to do.
As far as the change at Erfurt went, the moral condition of the town was to serve more than ever as a refutation of Luther’s expectation that “the works will follow.”
On January 24, 1524, Eobanus Hessus wrote to Lang: “Immorality, corruption of youth, contempt of learning and dissensions, such are the fruits of your Evangel.”[1033] “I dislike being here very much,” he says, in the same year, to his friend Sturz, “since all is lost, for there is now no hope of a revival of learning or of a recovery in public life. Everything is on the road to destruction, and we ourselves are rendered odious to all classes by reason of some unlearned deserters. “Oh, unhappy Erfurt,” he cries, in view of the “outrageous behaviour of these godless men of God”; one seeks to oppress the other; already the battlefield of passion is tinged with “blood.”[1034]
“You have by your preaching called forth a diabolical life in the town,” Usingen wrote in 1524 of the preachers at Erfurt, “although this is now displeasing to you, and you encourage it even up to the present day; you set the people free from the obedience which, according to the Divine command, they owe to the authorities of the Church, you deprive the people of the fear both of God and of man, hence the corruption of morals, which increases from day to day.”[1035]
Usingen, who continued courageously to vindicate the faith of his fathers, was depicted by the preachers as a “crazy old man,” just as they had been advised to do by Luther. “I am quite pleased to hear,” Luther wrote to Lang some considerable time after his return, “that this ‘Unsingen’ is still carrying on his fooleries; as the Apostle Paul says, their folly must be made manifest (2 Tim. iii. 9).”[1036]