Martin Luther — Letter 99 to Philip Melanchthon (1521)

To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood; to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with the appearances which every day for perhaps forty years had rendered familiar; this is the charact…

Its burden was not, "Do this or do that; labor and pray, and use the means;" - that is, law, not gospel: - but Christ has done all! He did it when he was "delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justificatio…

The tendency of the world's religion just now is, to reject the blood; and to glory in a gospel which needs no sacrifice, no "Lamb slain." Thus, they go "in the way of Cain."

Love led him down to the cradle; love led him up to the cross! He died as the sinner's substitute. He died to make it a righteous thing in God to cancel the sinner's guilt and annul the penalty of his everlasting death.

The right kind of pardon comes not from love alone, but from law; not from good nature, but from righteousness; not from indifference to sin, but from holiness.

The sinner's peace with God is not to come from his own character. No grounds of peace or elements of reconciliation can be extracted from himself, either directly or indirectly. His one qualification for peace is, that…