poverty, have no other present to make you, nor do you need anything
else than to be enriched by a spiritual gift. I commend myself to your
Paternity and Blessedness, whom may the Lord Jesus preserve for ever.
Amen.

Wittenberg, 6th September, 1520.




CONCERNING CHRISTIAN LIBERTY

Christian faith has appeared to many an easy thing; nay, not a few even
reckon it among the social virtues, as it were; and this they do because
they have not made proof of it experimentally, and have never tasted of
what efficacy it is. For it is not possible for any man to write well
about it, or to understand well what is rightly written, who has not at
some time tasted of its spirit, under the pressure of tribulation; while
he who has tasted of it, even to a very small extent, can never
write, speak, think, or hear about it sufficiently. For it is a living
fountain, springing up into eternal life, as Christ calls it in John iv.

Now, though I cannot boast of my abundance, and though I know how poorly
I am furnished, yet I hope that, after having been vexed by various
temptations, I have attained some little drop of faith, and that I can
speak of this matter, if not with more elegance, certainly with more
solidity, than those literal and too subtle disputants who have hitherto
discoursed upon it without understanding their own words. That I may
open then an easier way for the ignorant--for these alone I am trying
to serve--I first lay down these two propositions, concerning spiritual