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Some Catholics go so far as to charge Luther with having rejected the Pentateuch, the first five books in the Bible, because he speaks slightingly of Moses' law as a means of justification. Not only did Luther translate and take into his German Bible all the writings just named, but he also cites them in his doctrinal writings as proof-texts.
He noticed at once a directness, a simplicity, a spiritual flavor, coupled with much quoting of proof-texts, that attracted his deepest attention. He read an article on Repentance, one on Sanctification, and two testimonies of divine healing. "Upon my word! If that isn't the plainest-spoken and easiest-understood religious matter I have read in many a day," said Robert.
Then he determined to set himself to some definite work, and, taking his Concordance, began busily tracing out and numbering all the proof-texts for one of the chapters of his theological system! till, at last, he worked himself down to such calmness that he could pray; and then he schooled and reasoned with himself, in a style not unlike, in its spirit, to that in which a great modern author has addressed suffering humanity:
"We are all as an unclean thing, And all our righteousness are as filthy rags." And these mythic and poetic words, true to man's abiding sense of evil in his deepest hours, stand to-day in the arsenal of theology as proof-texts of the doctrines of original sin and total depravity! Even this folly has been surpassed. Among the proverbial sayings of the Jews was one to this effect;
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