[17] Koëstlin-Hay, op. cit., I, 355.
A TREATISE ON THE NEW TESTAMENT,
THAT IS THE HOLY MASS
1519
JESUS[1]
[Sidenote: The Multiplying of Laws]
1. Experience, all chronicles, and the Holy Scriptures besides, teach us this truth: the less law, the more justice; the fewer commandments, the more good works. No well-regulated community ever existed long, if at all, where there were many laws. Therefore, before the ancient law of Moses, the Patriarchs of old had no prescribed law and order for the service of God other than the sacrifices; as we read of Adam, Abel, Noah and others. Afterward, circumcision was enjoined upon Abraham and his household, until the time of Moses, through whom God gave the people of Israel divers laws, forms, and practices, for the sole purpose of teaching human nature how utterly useless many laws are to make people pious. For although the law leads and drives away from evil to good works, it is still impossible for man to do them willingly and gladly; but he has at all times an aversion for the law and would rather be free. Now where there is unwillingness, there can never be a good work. For what is not done willingly is not good, and only seems to be good. Consequently, all the laws cannot make one really pious without the grace of God, for they can produce only dissemblers, hypocrites, pretenders, and proud saints, such as have their reward here [Matt. 6:2], and never please God. Thus He says to the Jews, Malachi i: "I have no pleasure in you; for who is there among you that would even as much as shut a door for me, willingly and out of love?" [Mal. 1:10]
[Sidenote: Sects and Divisions]
2. Another result of many laws is this, that many sects and divisions in the congregations [Gemeinden] arise from them. One adopts this way, another that, and there grows up in each man a false, secret love for his own sect, and a hatred, or at least a contempt for, and a disregard of the other sects, whereby brotherly, free, common love perishes, and selfish love prevails. So Jeremiah and Hosea speak, [Jer. 2:28, Hos. 8:11,12] yea, all the profits lament that the people of Israel divided themselves into as many sects as there were cities in the land; each desiring to outdo the others. Thence also arose the Sadducees and Pharisees in the Gospel.
So we observe to-day, that through the Spiritual Law[2] but little justice and piety have arisen in Christendom; the world has been filled with dissemblers and hypocrites and with so many sects, orders, and divisions of the one people of Christ, that almost every city is divided into ten parties or more. And they daily devise new ways and manners (as they think) of serving God, until it has come to this, that priests, monks, and laity have become more hostile toward each other than Turks and Christians. Yea, the priests and the monks are deadly enemies, wrangling about their self-conceived ways and methods like fools and madmen, not only to the hindrance, but to the very destruction of Christian love and unity. Each one clings to his sect and despises the others; and they regard the laymen as though they were no Christians. This lamentable condition is only a result of the laws.