For this reason He has ordained that there should be another kind of obedience which He will accept as righteousness, namely, that we are to acknowledge our disobedience, and trust that we are pleasing to God for Christ's sake, not on account of our obedience. Accordingly, to be righteous in this case means to be pleasing to God, not on account of our own obedience, but from mercy for Christ's sake. Again, to sin is to hate God; therefore, to love God must be righteousness. True, to love God is the righteousness of the Law. But nobody fulfils this Law. Therefore the Gospel teaches a new kind of righteousness, namely, that we are pleasing to God for Christ's sake, although we have not fulfilled the Law; and yet, we are to begin to do the Law. Again, what is the difference between faith and hope? Answer: Hope expects future blessings and deliverance from tribulation; faith receives the present reconciliation, and concludes in the heart that God has forgiven my sin, and that He is now gracious to me. And this is a noble service of God, which serves God by giving Him the honor, and by esteeming His mercy and promise so sure that without merit we can receive and expect from Him all manner of blessings. And in this service of God the heart should be exercised and increase, of which the foolish sophists know nothing.] Hence it can also be understood why we find fault with the doctrine of the adversaries concerning _meritum condigni_. The decision is very easy: because they do not make mention of faith, that we please God by faith for Christ's sake, but imagine that good works, wrought by the aid of the habit of love, constitute a righteousness worthy by itself to please God, and worthy of eternal life, and that they have no need of Christ as Mediator. [This can in no wise be tolerated.] What else is this than to transfer the glory of Christ to our works, namely that we please God because of our works, and not because of Christ? But this is also to rob Christ of the glory of being the Mediator who is Mediator perpetually, and not merely in the beginning of Justification. Paul also says, Gal. 2, 17, that If one justified in Christ have need afterwards to seek righteousness elsewhere, he affirms of Christ that He is a minister of sin, i.e., that He does not fully justify. [And this is what the holy, catholic, Christian Church teaches, preaches, and confesses, namely, that we are saved by mercy as we have shown above from Jerome.] And most absurd is that which the adversaries teach, namely, that good works merit _grace de condigno_, as though indeed after the beginning of justification, if conscience is terrified, as is ordinarily the case, grace must be sought through a good work, and not by faith in Christ.