Merit
When you came to the passage on Merit, you did not touch it even with a finger, but referred to a certain Roffensis,t
[“This section was copied into the True and False Religion. See p. 275. ti. e, man of Rochester. This was John Fisher, Bishop of Rochester.]
[Emser had cited his Assertionis Lutheranae confutatio, published in 1523.]
though whether he is a man or perchance some god, I don’t know. For if he holds a view of merit different from that of the Holy Scriptures, he must be above that which is and is considered deity; for the holy men of God spoke imbued with the spirit of God [ef. II Pet. 1: 21]. If this Roffensis of yours communicates better and surer things, he undoubtedly is superior to Him who communicated earlier things, which I have followed. But as this cannot be the case, you ought to have exerted yourself to overthrow the things in which I trust; and where I misunderstood God’s word you ought to have led me to the true fountains. For, however highly the most excellent men think of Roffensis, yet I should never have referred to him, but to the Holy Seriptures, which Christ Himself commanded us to search [Jn. 5:39].
To the rich man who with Tantalus was suffering from thirst He said by the mouth of Abraham: “They have Moses and the prophets; let them read them [Lk. 16:29]. So ought you, 1 say, to have done, and especially since you could have done it briefly, as I am going to do here.
“No one cometh unto the Father but by me,” says the Truth, Jn. 14: 6. For the Truth is the same as the Way and the Life. Therefore we come to God not by our merits, but by Christ only.
Jn. 15: 4-5: “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the branches.” So of our strength we can do nothing, but only by the strength of the vine. What, then, do we merit?
“Behold the lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world,” Jn. 1: 29. Our merits, then, do not take away sins; for if they did Christ would have been sent from heaven in vain. Of Him the lamb caught in the thicket and slain by Abraham in his son’s stead was a symbol [cf. Gen. 22: 13].
Matt. 19: 26: “With men this,” namely, to be saved, “is impossible; but with God all things are possible” “Therefore we get ready our own merits in vain, if being saved is not a matter of human power.
Lk. 17:10: So ye also, when ye shall have done all the things that are commanded you, say: We are unprofitable serv-
ants.” If we are unprofitable servants, how is it possible for our merits to be of any use; since a reward for merit can be given only when we have been profitable?
Jn. 15:5: “Apart from me ye can do nothing.” Since, then, we can do nothing, we merit nothing.
Ibid. “Ye did not choose me, but I chose you.” Therefore we are not united to God because of our merits, but by the kindness of Christ.
Jn. 9:1-3: When Jesus was asked by whose sin it was that the man whose sight He a moment afterwards restored was born blind, He replied: “Neither did this man sin, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” Therefore it is by the free will of God that thus or so we are born, and live, and spend our days. But God manifests His glory according to that same will; and so no one may say: “Why didst thou make me thus” [Rom. 9:20]? But since the innermost working of divine providence, which we call predestination, here comes into view, and since I must hurry on to other things, I will pass on from Christ’s words to Paul’s.
Rom. 11: 6: “But if it (ὁ. e., election) be of works, then is it no more grace” or gift. Hence those who rely upon works repudiate grace. Read the whole Epistle to the Romans and the one to the Galatians, and you will see what merit is and what grace is. But if (as seems the case) you are more given to the Fathers than to the one Heavenly Father, read Augus-tine’s book, “On Free Will and Grace.”
Rom. 3: 20, Gal. 3:10: “By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight.” ‘Then why so much about merit? Rom. 3:23-24: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified freely by his grace.” If, then, we have all so sinned that we have need of the glory of God, and He has manifested His glory by freely justifying us, merit is nothing but a harmful fiction.
I Cor. 15: 22: As in Adam all die,” ete. “Therefore in Adam we all are dead. How then shall we work anything living or worthy of life? But “in Christ shall all be made alive”; therefore not by our own merits.
Gal. 2:16: “Yet knowing that a man is not justified by
the works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ.” If, then, deeds do not make us blessed, why do we invent merit?
Gal. 2: 21: “For if righteousness is through the law, then Christ died for nought.” Therefore if heaven is entered by means of our works, in vain was Christ sent to open it.
Gal. 5:4: “Ye are severed from Christ, ye who would be justified by the law; ye are fallen away from grace.” Therefore they who rely upon works are aliens from Christ. For I suppose you understand well that to be justified by the law is not merely to know the law or to read it, but to try to carry it out so as to be justified. For it would be foolish to think Paul supposed anyone is saved by the tenor or sense of the law.
Philip. 2: 13: For it is God that worketh in you both to will and to work.”
Everything will fail me—paper, pen, time—sooner than the testimonies by which we see clearer than day that blessedness is freely given us only by the grace of God and not because of our merits. And this grace is most richly imparted and made sure through Jesus Christ, so that we all receive of his abundance.
I do not deny that many passages in which merit seems to be asserted might be adduced on the other side; but we must always have recourse to the rule that, whenever the same thing is eredited both to God and to us, we are always to follow the view that looks to the glory of God, and, hallowing His name, to refer everything to it, instead of that view which assigns something to us; although God, through loving-kindness, in which He never fails us, sometimes attributes to us as His ministers and sons things that are His alone. For we are His sons only by His own gift, as when He says, Mt. 10: 40: He that receiveth you receiveth me”; and [Mt. 10: 8]: “Go ye, heal the sick, cleanse the lepers,” ete.; and [Jn. 20: 23]: “Whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them.” In innumerable other passages, He attributes to us that which cannot possibly be any one’s but His. Thus we see that here, too, in the case of merit, to our works is attributed, even by the mouth of God, that which is of His grace, for no other reason than the one just mentioned: namely, because of His loving-kindness; or because among the members of Christ there are always some
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