ents of his
own body, a man cannot take his ease, but is compelled on its account
to do many good works, that he may bring it into subjection. Yet these
works are not the means of his justification before God; he does them
out of disinterested love to the service of God; looking to no other
end than to do what is well-pleasing to Him whom he desires to obey most
dutifully in all things.

On this principle every man may easily instruct himself in what measure,
and with what distinctions, he ought to chasten his own body. He will
fast, watch, and labour, just as much as he sees to suffice for keeping
down the wantonness and concupiscence of the body. But those who pretend
to be justified by works are looking, not to the mortification of their
lusts, but only to the works themselves; thinking that, if they can
accomplish as many works and as great ones as possible, all is well with
them, and they are justified. Sometimes they even injure their brain,
and extinguish nature, or at least make it useless. This is enormous
folly, and ignorance of Christian life and faith, when a man seeks,
without faith, to be justified and saved by works.

To make what we have said more easily understood, let us set it forth
under a figure. The works of a Christian man, who is justified and saved
by his faith out of the pure and unbought mercy of God, ought to be
regarded in the same light as would have been those of Adam and Eve in
paradise and of all their posterity if they had not sinned. Of them it
is said, "The Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden
to dress it and to keep it" (Gen. ii. 15). Now Adam had been created by
God just and righteous, so that he could not have needed to be justified
and made righteous by keeping the garden and working in it; but, that
he might not be unemployed, God gave him the business of keeping and
cultivating paradise. These would have indeed been works of perfect
freedom, being done for no object but that of pleasing God, and not in
order to obtain justification, which he already had to the full, and
which would have been innate in us all.

So it is with the works of a believer. Being by his faith replaced
afresh in paradise and created anew, he does not need works for his
justification, but that he may not be idle, but may exercise his own
body and preserve it. His works are to be done freely, with the sole
object of pleasing God. Only we are not yet fully created anew in
perfect fait