CONCERNING CHRISTIAN LIBERTY

CONCERNING CHRISTIAN LIBERTY
take up the fish that first coth up; and when thou hast opened hi
outh thou shalt find a piece of money; that take, and give unto them for
Me and thee" (Matt. xvii. 27).
This example is very much to our purpose; for here Christ calls
Hielf and His disciples free men and children of a Kig, in want of
nothg; and yet He voluntarily submits and pays the tax. Just as far,
then, as this work was necessary or useful to Christ for justification or
salvation, so far do all His othr works or thos of His disciples avail for
justifiation. They are really free and subsequent to justification, and
only done to serve others and set them an example.
Such are the wrks which Paul inculcated, that Christians should be
subject to principalities and pors and ready to every good wrk (Titus
iii. 1), not that they may be justified by these things--for they are already
justified by faith--but that in liberty of spirit they may thus be the
servants of others and subject to powers, obeying thr wi out of
gratuitous love
Such, too, ought to have been the wrks of all cges, monasteries,
and priests; every one doing the works of his own professio and state of
life, not in order to be justified by them, but in order to bring his own
body into subjection, as an example to others, who themselves al need
to keep under thr bodi, and als i order to acodate himself to
the wi of others, out of free love. But w must alays guard mst
carefully against any vain confidece or presumption of being justified,
gaing merit, or beng saved by these works, th being the part of faith
alone, as I have so often said.
Ay man possessing thi kndge may easily keep clear of danger
among thoe innumerable commands and precepts of the Pope, of
bisps, of monasteries, of churches, of princes, and of magistrates,
wich so foolish pastors urge on us as being necessary for
justification and salvation, calling them precepts of the Church, when
they are not so at all. For the Christian freeman will speak thus: I wi
fast, I wi pray, I will do ths or that which is coanded me by mn,
nt as having any need of these things for justification or salvation, but
that I may thus comply with the wll of the Pope, of the biop, of suc a
38