t mortal has ever discovered or fathomed the truth that the
three persons in the eternal divine essence are one God; that the
second person, the Son of God, was obliged to become man, born of a
virgin; and that no way of life could be opened for us, save through
his crucifixion? Such truth never would have been heard nor preached,
would never in all eternity have been published, learned and
believed, had not God himself revealed it.

14. For this season they are blind fools of first magnitude and
dangerous characters who would boast of their grand performances, and
think that the people are served when they preach their own fancies
and inventions. It has been the practice in the Church for anyone to
introduce any teaching he saw fit; for example, the monks and priests
have daily produced new saints, pilgrimages, special prayers, works
and sacrifices in the effort to blot out sin, redeem souls from
purgatory, and so on. They who make up things of this kind are not
such as put their trust in God through Christ, but rather such as
defy God and Christ. Into the hearts of men, where Christ alone
should be, they shove the filth and write the lies of the devil. Yet
they think themselves, and themselves only, qualified for all
essential teaching and work, self-grown doctors that they are, saints
all-powerful without the help of God and Christ.

"But our sufficiency is from God."

15. Of ourselves--in our own wisdom and strength--we cannot effect,
discover nor teach any counsel or help for man, whether for ourselves
or others. Any good work we perform among you, any doctrine we write
upon your heart--that is God's own work. He puts into our heart and
mouth what we should say, and impresses it upon your heart through
the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we cannot ascribe to ourselves any honor
therein, cannot seek our own glory as the self-instructed and proud
spirits do; we must give to God alone the honor, and must glory in
the fact that by his grace and power he works in you unto salvation,
through the office committed unto us.

16. Now, Paul's thought here is that nothing should be taught and
practiced in the Church but what is unquestionably God's Word. It
will not do to introduce or perform anything whatever upon the
strength of man's judgment. Man's achievements, man's reasoning and
power, are of no avail save in so far as they come from God. As Peter
says in his first epistle (ch. 4, 11): "If any man speaketh, speaking
as it