Search -
A Commentary on the Psalms Called the Psalms of Degrees
A Commentary on the Psalms Called the Psalms of Degrees Author:Martin Luther Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MARTIN LUTHER's PREFACE HIS COMMENTARY UPON THE FIFTEEN PSALMS, CALLED PS4LMS OF DEGREES. Ye have heard me before many times declare in the beginning... more » of my Lectures, for what cause I have taken in hand to expound the holy Scriptures ; not for any desire I have to teach new and strange things which have not been known or heard before (for our divinity is so well known both in the Latin tongue, and also in our own language, that we may seem now to have more need of exhortation than instruction ;) but because the diligent teaching and setting forth of the word of God is a kind of God's service or worship properly belonging to the New Testament, being much more acceptable unto God, more holy and excellent than were all the worshippings and sacrifices of the Old Testament, and therefore even when the law was aa yet in his full strength, the holy prophets of God, utterly rejecting the burnt offerings and other sacrifices of the law, did commend, above all other, the sacrifice of praise. In like manner also ought we so much the more earnestly and diligently to set forth this kind of worship, because that, after so great blindness wherein we have lived, the wisdom of God hath (as the sun in the mid-day) appeared and shined unto us again. Therefore like as it hath been counted a manner of servitude in times past, to bear a godly sermon (which men were wont to do even as they did their servile labours0so must we now otherwise think, that, they which teach, "read, write or hear the holy Scriptures, are God's true priests, which serve their God with a worthy and thankful kind of worship. Albeit true it is also that we cannot here attain to such full knowledge of spiritual matters, but that daily we have need to learn them again, to be exercised'and confirmed therein, because o...« less