Good works (Theology); Lutheran Church -- Doctrines
But if you ask what you shall speak of and lament in your prayer, you
can easily learn from the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer. Open
your eyes and look into your life and the life of all Christians,
especially of the spiritual estate, and you will find how faith, hope,
love, obedience, chastity and every virtue languish, and all manner of
heinous vices reign; what a lack there is of good preachers and
prelates; how only knaves, children, fools and women rule. Then you
will see that there were need every hour without ceasing to pray
everywhere with tears of blood to God, Who is so terribly angry with
men. And it is true that it has never been more necessary to pray than
at this time, and it will be more so from now on to the end of the
world. If such terrible crimes do not move you to lament and complain,
do not permit yourself to be led astray by your rank, station, good
works or prayer: there is no Christian vein or trait in you, however
righteous you may be. But it has all been foretold, that when God's
anger is greatest and Christendom suffers the greatest need, then
petitioners and supplicants before God shall not be found, as Isaiah
says with tears, chapter lxiv: "Thou art angry with us, and there is
none that calleth upon Thy Name, that stirreth up himself to take hold
of Thee." Likewise, Ezekiel xxii: "I sought for a man among them, that
should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before me for the land,
that I should not destroy it; but I found none. Therefore have I poured
out Mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of
My wrath." With these words God indicates how He wants us to withstand
Him and turn away His anger from one another, as it is frequently
written of the Prophet Moses, that he restrained God, lest His anger
should overwhelm the people of Israel.
XV. But what will they do, who not only do not regard such misfortune
of Christendom, and do not pray against it, but laugh at it, take
pleasure in it, condemn, malign, sing and talk of their neighbor's
sins, and yet dare, unafraid and unashamed, go to church, hear mass,
say prayers, and regard themselves and are regarded as pious
Christians? These truly are in need that we pray twice for them, if we
pray once for those whom they condemn, talk about and laugh at. That
there would be such is also prophesied by the thief on Christ's left
hand, who blasphemed Him in His suffering, weakness and need; also by
all those who reviled Christ on the Cross, when they should most of all
have helped Him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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