Shall we not do good works? Shall we not pray any more, fast, found monasteries, become monks or nuns, or do similar works? The answer is: “There are two kinds of good works, some which are looked upon as good,” i.e. “our own self-chosen works,” such as “special fasting, special prayers, wearing a special dress or joining an Order.” “None of this is ordained by God,” and “Christian faith looks to nothing save Christ only,” therefore these works we must leave severely alone. There are, on the other hand, works which are better than these. “When once we have laid hold upon Christ, then good Christian works follow, such as God has commanded and which man performs not for his own advantage but in the service of his neighbour.” But even of these works Luther is careful to add that they should be performed “without placing any trust in them for justification.” “Fasting is a good work,” but then, “the devil himself does not eat too much,” and sometimes even “a Jew” fasts; “prayer is also a good work,” but it does not consist in “much mumbling or shouting,” and even “the Turk prays much with his lips.” “No one may or can bear the name of Christian except by the work of Christ.”[1031] Thus, even where he is forced to admit good works, he must needs add a warning. Finally, where he is exhorting to the patient bearing of crosses, he immediately, and most strangely, restricts this exercise of virtue to the limits of his own experience: One bears the cross when he is unjustly proclaimed “a heretic and evil-doer,” not “when he is sick in bed”; to bear the cross is to be “deprived of interior consolation,” and to be severely tried by “God’s hand and by His anger.”[1032] In the new congregation at Erfurt it was a question of the very foundations of the moral life. Yet in Luther’s addresses we miss the necessary exhortations to a change of heart, to struggle against the passions and overcome sensuality. Neither is the sinner exhorted to repentance, penance, contrition, fear of God and a firm purpose of amendment, nor are the more zealous encouraged to the active exercise of the love of God, to self-denial according to the virtues of their state, or to sanctification by the use of those means which Luther still continued to recognise, at least to a certain extent, such as the Eucharist. All his exhortations merge into this one thing, trust in Christ. He preached, indeed, one part of the sermon of the Precursor, viz. “The Kingdom of God is at hand”; with the other: “Bring forth therefore fruit worthy of penance,” he would have nothing to do. As far as the change at Erfurt went, the moral condition of the town was to serve more than ever as a refutation of Luther’s expectation that “the works will follow.”