








A Treatise on Good Works

together with the Letter of Dedication

by Dr. Martin Luther, 1520




INTRODUCTION

1. The Occasion of the Work.--Luther did not impose himself as reformer
upon the Church. In the course of a conscientious performance of the
duties of his office, to which he had been regularly and divinely
called, and without any urging on his part, he attained to this
position by inward necessity. In 1515 he received his appointment as
the standing substitute for the sickly city pastor, Simon Heinse, from
the city council of Wittenberg. Before this time he was obliged to
preach only occasionally in the convent, apart from his activity as
teacher in the University and convent. Through this appointment he was
in duty bound, by divine and human right, to lead and direct the
congregation at Wittenberg on the true way to life, and it would have
been a denial of the knowledge of salvation which God had led him to
acquire, by way of ardent inner struggles, if he had led the
congregation on any other way than the one God had revealed to him in
His Word. He could not deny before the congregation which had been
intrusted to his care, what up to this time he had taught with ever
increasing clearness in his lectures at the University--for in the
lectures on the Psalms, which he began to deliver in 1513, he declares
his conviction that faith alone justifies, as can be seen from the
complete manuscript, published since 1885, and with still greater
clearness from his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (1515-1516),
which