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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A treatise on Good Works by Dr. Martin Luther: a thing as picking up a straw. If confidence is absent, or if he
doubts, the work is not good, although it should raise all the
dead and the man should give himself to be burned. This is the
teaching of St. Paul, Romans xiv: "Whatsoever is not done of or
in faith is sin." Faith, as the chief work, and no other work,
has given us the name of "believers on Christ." For all other
works a heathen, a Jew, a Turk, a sinner, may also do; but to
trust firmly that he pleases God, is possible only for a
Christian who is enlightened and strengthened by grace.
That these words seem strange, and that some call me a heretic
because of them, is due to the fact that men have followed blind
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