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
simpleminded man is so easily misled that our Lord Christ has commanded
us to watch carefully for the sheep's clothings under which the wolves
hide themselves.

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 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 writers, we all want to
be critics.

I will most gladly leave to any one else the honor of greater things,
and not be at all ashamed to preach and to write in German for the
unlearned laymen. Although I too have little skill in it, I believe
that if we had hitherto done, and should henceforth do more of it,
Christendom would have reaped no small advantage, and have been more
bene fited by this than by the great, deep books and quaestiones, which
are used only in the schools, among the learned.

Then, too, I have never forced or begged any one to hear me, or to read
my sermons. I have freely ministered in the Church of that which God
has given me and which I owe the Church. Whoever likes it not, may hear
and read what others have to say. And if they are not willing to be my
debtors, it matters little. For me it is enough, and even more than too
much, that some laymen condescend to read what I say. Even though there
were nothing else to urge me, it should be more than sufficient that I
have learned that your p