6. Luther's Fundamental Doctrine.--Luther belonged to this last-named class. Long before he came to an open rupture with the pope, he taught the doctrine of predestination, and of salvation through faith alone:--"The excellent, infallible, and sole preparation for grace is the eternal election and predestination of God." "On the side of man there is nothing that goes before grace, unless it be impotency and even rebellion." "We do not become righteous by doing what is righteous; but having become righteous we do what is righteous." [21] "Since the fall of man, free will is but an idle word; and if man does all he can he still sins mortally." "A man who imagines to arrive at grace by doing all that he is able to do adds sin to sin and is doubly guilty." "That man is not justified who performs many works; but he who, without works, has much faith in Christ." [22] "What gives peace to our consciences is this--by faith our sins are no longer ours, but Christ's on whom God has laid them all; and, on the other hand, all Christ's righteousness belongs to us, to whom God has given it." [23] Thus taught Luther, and this became the first, the main theological question of the reformation. "The point which the Reformer had most at heart in all his labors, contests and dangers," says a respectable authority, "was the doctrine of justification by faith alone." [24] [Note 3, end of section.] 7. It is but just to the Reformer however, that it should be known that he did not himself reject good works, but on the contrary exhorted men to practice them; but he condemns {235} those who did them with an idea that by them they would be justified, or that they were necessary to salvation. He held also that in order to do good works men must first be justified, and that good works done before justification were even sinful.[25]