Over  against  the  wide-spread  opinion,  as  though  the  will  of  God  as  declared
in  the  Ten  Commandments  referred  only  to  the  outward  work  always  espe-
cially mentioned,  Luther's  argument  must  have  called  to  mind  the  explana-
tion of  the  Law,  which  the  Lord  had  given  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,
when  he  taught  men  to  recognize  only  the  extreme  point  and  manifes-
tation of  a  whole  trend  of  thought  in  the  work  prohibited  by  the  text,  and
when  he  directed  Christians  not  to  rest  in  the  keeping  of  the  literal  require-
ment of  each  Commandment,  but  from  this  point  of  vantage  to  inquire  into
the  whole  depth  and  breadth  of  God's  will — positively  and  negatively —
and  to  do  His  will  in  its  full  extent  as  the  heart  has  perceived  it.  Though
this  thought  may  have  been  occasionally  expressed  in  the  expositions  of  the
Ten  Commandments  which  appeared  at  the  dawn  of  the  Reformation,  still
it  had  never  before  been  so  clearly  recognized  as  the  only  correct  principle,
much  less  had  it  been  so  energetically  carried  out  from  beginning  to  end,  as
is  done  in  this  treatise.  Over  against  the  deep-rooted  view  that  the  works
of  love  must  bestow  upon  faith  its  form,  its  content  and  its  worth  before
God,  it  must  have  appeared  as  the  dawn  of  a  new  era  (Galatians  3:22-25)
when  Luther  in  this  treatise  declared,  and  with  victorious  certainty  carried
out  the  thought,  that  it  is  true  faith  which  invests  the  works,  even  the  best
and  greatest  of  works,  with  their  content  and  worth  before  God.
