With Luther, it may be admitted, the ethical interest was secondary, in the sense that he preached the receptive power of faith with more 6. The enthusiasm than the effective power; Teaching of that faith is, according to him, ethio-
Luther and ally effective only when it is not too Melanch- far removed from its idealization, as he thon. himself for the most part experienced it; and that he should have avoided his apparently antinomian modes of expression. His principal work, Von den guten Werken (1520), begins with "It is to be understood in the first place that those things commanded by God are not the only good works." 'Luther believed that faith brought all religious activities along with it. He refers several times in this tract to the charge that he forbade good works. While he had condemned mere legal good works, intended to procure blessedness for the doer, he defended good works &,rising from faith. Good works are, according to him, the end and aim of faith, which reenforces the natural human motives to good works. Faith, especially that in the beneficence of God, disposes the recreated man to be beneficent to his neighbor. Good works are not necessary to blessedness; they flow of necessity from the beatific faith. He who has been baptized and believes is just and happy, and has received heaven and eternal life. But in order to remain so, he must retain, exercise, complete, and test his faith, and for this good works are necessary. Good works are a means, at the judgment, for measuring the degree of faith, but are not in themselves causes of blessedness. Luther continued the fight of the mystics against the "regard for reward," but in practise he did not take away the motives of reward. Melanchthon, on the other hand, defended the principle of obligation in the good works of believers-they are not "forced" but "owed." In the Augsburg Confession, VI., the statutory motive, the necessity arising from command and obligation, is placed beside the more idealistic bringing forth of good fruits, and the "thus hath God commanded" contains a third thought-it is aimed at the former emphasis upon " childishly unnecessary works,, of which MelanchthOn Complains in articles XX. 3, XXVI.2, XXVII. 13. In §f bodii. sqq. of the "Apology" the ideas of merit and reward are brought in-good works are meritorious, but deserve neither justification nor I eternal life, but only "other corporal and spiritual rewards in this life and afterward."
For the controversies about the necessity of good works in the seventeenth century see Antinomian-
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