But you ask how it can be the fact that faith alone justifies, and
affords without works so great a treasure of good things, when so many
works, ceremonies, and laws are prescribed to us in the Scriptures?
I answer, Before all things bear in mind what I have said: that faith
alone without works justifies, sets free, and saves, as I shall show
more clearly below.

Meanwhile it is to be noted that the whole Scripture of God is divided
into two parts: precepts and promises. The precepts certainly teach us
what is good, but what they teach is not forthwith done. For they show
us what we ought to do, but do not give us the power to do it. They
were ordained, however, for the purpose of showing man to himself, that
through them he may learn his own impotence for good and may despair of
his own strength. For this reason they are called the Old Testament, and
are so.

For example, "Thou shalt not covet," is a precept by which we are all
convicted of sin, since no man can help coveting, whatever efforts to
the contrary he may make. In order therefore that he may fulfil the
precept, and not covet, he is constrained to despair of himself and
to seek elsewhere and through another the help which he cannot find in
himself; as it is said, "O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in
Me is thine help" (Hosea xiii. 9). Now what is done by this one precept
is done by all; for all are equally impossible of fulfilment by us.

Now when a man has through the precepts been taught his own impotence,
and become anxious by what means he may satisfy the law--for the
law must be satisfied, so that no jot or tittle of it may pass away,
otherwise he must be hopelessly condemned--then, being truly humbled and