Just as far, then,
as this work was necessary or useful to Christ for justification or
salvation, so far do all His other works or those of His disciples avail
for justification. They are really free and subsequent to justification,
and only done to serve others and set them an example.
Such are the works which Paul inculcated, that Christians should be
subject to principalities and powers and ready to every good work (Titus
iii. 1), not that they may be justified by these things--for they are
already justified by faith--but that in liberty of spirit they may thus
be the servants of others and subject to powers, obeying their will out
of gratuitous love.
Such, too, ought to have been the works of all colleges, monasteries,
and priests; every one doing the works of his own profession and state
of life, not in order to be justified by them, but in order to bring his
own body into subjection, as an example to others, who themselves
also need to keep under their bodies, and also in order to accommodate
himself to the will of others, out of free love. But we must always
guard most carefully against any vain confidence or presumption of being
justified, gaining merit, or being saved by these works, this being the
part of faith alone, as I have so often said.
Any man possessing this knowledge may easily keep clear of danger among
those innumerable commands and precepts of the Pope, of bishops, of
monasteries, of churches, of princes, and of magistrates, which some
foolish pastors urge on us as being necessary for justification and
salvation, calling them precepts of the Church, when they are not so
at all.
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