Starting from his doctrine that good works are only those which God has commanded, and that the highest is “faith, or trust in God’s mercy,”[306] he endeavours to show, agreeably to his usual idea, that from faith the works proceed, and for this reason he lingers over the first four commandments of the Decalogue. He explains the principle that faith knows no idleness. By this faith the believer is inwardly set free from the laws and ceremonies by which men were driven to perform good works. If faith reigned in all, then of such there would no longer be any need. The Christian must perform good works, but he is free to perform works of any kind, no man being bound to one or any work, though he finds no fault with those who bind themselves.[307] “Here we see, that, by faith, every work and thing is lawful to a Christian, though, because the others do not yet believe, he bears with them and performs even what he knows is not really binding.”[308] Faith issues in works and all works come back to faith, to strengthen the assurance of salvation.[309] His explanation of the 3rd Commandment, where he speaks of the ghostly Sabbath of the soul and of the putting to death of the old man, seems like an attempt to lay down some sort of a system of moral injunction, and incidentally recalls the pseudo-mystic phase through which Luther had passed not so long before. Here we get just a glimpse of his theory of human unfreedom and of God’s sole action, so far as this was in place in a work intended for the “unschooled laity.”[310]