e at stake, whether it be against pope or
kings. Where such faith is present there is also strife against
the evil lust, as forbidden in the Ninth and Tenth Commandments,
and that even unto death.

3. The Importance of the Work.--Inquiring now into the importance
of the book, we note that Luther's impression evidently was
perfectly correct, when he wrote to Spalatin, long before its
completion--as early as March 15.--that he believed it to be
better than anything he had heretofore written. His book,
indeed, surpasses all his previous German writings in volume, as
well as all his Latin and German ones in clearness, richness and
the fundamental importance of its content. In comparison with the
prevalent urging of self-elected works of monkish holiness, which
had arisen from a complete misunderstanding of the so-called
evangelical counsels (comp. esp. Matthew 19:16-22) and which were
at that time accepted as self-evident and zealously urged by the
whole church, Luther's argument must have appeared to all
thoughtful and earnest souls as a revelation, when he so clearly
amplified the proposition that only those works are to be
regarded as good works which God has commanded, and that
therefore, not the abandoning of one's earthly calling, but the
faithful keeping of the Ten Commandments in the course of one's
calling, is the work which God requires of us. Over against the
wide-spread opinion, as though the will of God as declared in the
Ten Commandments referred only to the outward work always
especially mentioned, Luther's argument must have called to mind
the explanation of the Law, which the Lord had given in the
Sermon on the Mount, when he taught men to recognize only the
extreme point and manifestation of a whole trend of thought in
the work prohibited by the text, and when he directed Christians
not to rest in the keeping of the literal requirement of each
Commandment, but from this point of vantage to inquire into the
whole depth and breadth of God's will--positively and
negatively--and to do His will in its full extent as the heart
has perceived it. Though this thought may have been occasionally
expressed in the expositions of the Ten Commandments which
appeared at the dawn of the Reformation, still it had never
before been so clearly recognized as the only correct principle,
much less had it been so energetically carried out from beginning
to end, as is done in this treatise. Over against the deep-rooted
view th