you in sheep's clothing." Such are all who wish with their many good
works, as they say, to make God favorable to themselves, and to buy
God's grace from Him, as if He were a huckster or a day-laborer,
unwilling to give His grace and favor for nothing. These are the most
perverse people on earth, who will hardly or never be converted to the
right way. Such too are all who in adversity run hither and thither,
and look for counsel and help everywhere except from God, from Whom
they are most urgently commanded to seek it; whom the Prophet Isaiah
reproves thus, Isaiah ix: "The mad people turneth not to Him that
smiteth them"; that is, God smote them and sent them sufferings and all
kinds of adversity, that they should run to Him and trust Him. But
they run away from Him to men, now to Egypt, now to Assyria, perchance
also to the devil; and of such idolatry much is written in the same
Prophet and in the Books of the Kings. This is also the way of all holy
hypocrites when they are in trouble: they do not run to God, but flee
from Him, and only think of how they may get rid of their trouble
through their own efforts or through human help, and yet they consider
themselves and let others consider them pious people.

XI. This is what St. Paul means in many places, where he ascribes so
much to faith, that he says: Justus ex fide sua vivit, "the righteous
man draws his life out of his faith," and faith is that because of
which he is counted righteous before God. If righteousness consists of
faith, it is clear that faith fulfils all commandments and makes all
works righteous, since no one is justified except he keep all the
commands of God. Again, the works can justify no one before God without
faith. So utterly and roundly does the Apostle reject works and praise
faith, that some have taken offence at his words and say: "Well, then,
we will do no more good works," although he condemns such men as erring
and foolish.

So men still do. When we reject the great, pretentious works of our
time, which are done entirely without faith, they say: Men are only to
believe and not to do anything good. For nowadays they say that the
works of the First Commandment are singing, reading, organ-playing,
reading the mass, saying matins and vespers and the other hours, the
founding and decorating of churches, altars, and monastic houses, the
gathering of bells, jewels, garments, trinkets and treasures, running
to Rome and to the saints. Further, w