who is the end of the Law for righteousness to every one that believeth (Rom. 10, 4), and he falls under the curse of God for placing his own merits alongside of the merit of the Redeemer’s sacrifice.  In no other connection has Luther spoken against good works.  He has rather taught men how to become fruitful in well-doing by the sanctifying grace of God and according to the inspiring example of the matchless Jesus.  Concerning the Law, Luther preached 1 Tim. 1, 9:  “The Law is not made for a righteous man,” that is, Christians do the works of the Law, not for the Law’s sake, but for the sake of Christ, whom they love and whose mind is in them.  They must not be driven like slaves to obey God, but their very faith prompts them to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world (Tit. 2, 12).  But Luther always held that the rule for good works is laid down in the holy Law of God, and only in that; also that the Law must be applied to Christians, in as far as they still live in, the flesh, and are not become altogether spiritual.  Luther’s public activity as a preacher began with a series of sermons on the Ten Commandments, and this effort to expound the divine norm of righteousness was repeated several times during Luther’s life.  Luther’s expositions of the Decalog are among the finest that the world possesses.  Moreover, Luther wrote the Small Catechism.  Hand any Catholic who talks about Luther having abolished the Ten Commandments this little book.  That is a sufficient refutation.  What Luther teaches in this book he has given his life to reduce to practise in himself and others.  He says in a sermon on Easter Monday, 1530:  “When rising in the morning, I pray with my children the Ten Commandments, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and some Psalm.  I do this because I want to make myself cling to these truths.  I shall not suffer my faith to become mildewed with the imagination that I am above these things (dass ich’s koenne).”  His sermon on the First Sunday in Advent in the same year he begins thus:  “Dear friends, I am now an old Doctor, still I find every day that I must recite with the children the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer, and I have always derived a great benefit and blessing from this practise.” (12, 1611. 1641.)

Luther is charged with mendacity, that is, he is said to have lied.  The reasons that will be given for this charge, when called for, will probably be these:  Luther at various times in his life gave three different years as the year of his birth, three different years as the year when he made his journey to Rome, and advised somebody in 1512 to become a monk when he had already commenced to denounce the monastic life:  It is true that Luther did all these things, but it is also true that Luther believed himself right in each of his statements.  He was simply mistaken.  Other people have misstated the year of their birth without being branded liars on that account.  Sometimes even a professor forgets things, and Luther was a professor.  What Luther has said about the rigor of his monastic life is perfectly true, but it was no reason why in 1512 he should counsel men to become monks.  He had not yet come to the full knowledge of the wrong principles underlying that mode of life.  To adduce such inaccuracies as evidence of prevarication is itself an insincere act and puts the claimant by right in the Ananias Club.