My humble duty and
my feeble prayer for your Grace always remembered!

For a long time, gracious Prince and Lord, I have wished to show
my humble respect and duty toward your princely Grace, by the
exhibition of some such spiritual wares as are at my disposal;
but I have always considered my powers too feeble to undertake
anything worthy of being offered to your princely Grace.

Since, however, my most gracious Lord Frederick, Duke of Saxony,
Elector and Vicar of the Holy Roman Empire, your Grace's brother,
has not despised, but graciously accepted my slight book,[2]
dedicated to his electoral Grace, and now published--though such
was not my intention--I have taken courage from his gracious
example and ventured to think that the princely spirit, like the
princely blood, may be the same in both of you, especially in
gracious kindness and good will. I have hoped that your princely
Grace likewise would not despise this my humble offering which I
have felt more need of publishing than any other of my sermons or
tracts. For the greatest of all questions has been raised, the
question of Good Works, in which is practised immeasurably more
trickery and deception than in anything else, and in which the
simple-minded man is so easily misled that our Lord Christ has
commanded us to watch carefully for the sheep's clothing under
which the wolves hide themselves. [Matt. 7:15]

Neither silver, gold, precious stones, nor any rare thing has
such manifold alloys and flaws as have good works, which ought to
have a single simple goodness, and without it are mere color,
show and deceit.

And although I know and daily hear many people, who think
slightingly of my poverty, and say that I write only little
pamphlets[3] and German sermons for the unlearned laity, this
shall not disturb me. Would to God I had in all my life, with all
the ability I have, helped one layman to be better! I would be
satisfied, thank God, and be quite willing then to let all my
little books perish.

Whether the making of many great books is an art and a benefit to
the Church, I leave others to judge. But I believe that if I were
minded to make great books according to their art, I could, with
God's help, do it more readily perhaps than they could prepare a
little discourse after my fashion. If accomplishment were as easy
as persecution, Christ would long since have been cast out of
heaven again, and God's throne itself overturned. Although we
cannot all be