keep the Sixth
Commandment. When the heart trusts in the divine favor, it cannot seek
after the temporal goods of others, nor cleave to money, but according
to the Seventh Commandment, will use it with cheerful liberality for
the benefit of the neighbor. Where such confidence is present there is
also a courageous, strong and intrepid heart, which will at all times
defend the truth, as the Eighth Commandment demands, whether neck or
coat be 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 2 5.--that he believed it to be better than anything he
had heretofore written. The 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-