Annotatio CXXXVIII

”I feared all my works.” — Job 9:28

Gregory, in book 9 of the Explanations on Job, explaining this, says:¹ “By the holy man Job it is rightly said, ‘I feared all my works,’ as if it were said, with humble confession: What I have done openly, I see; but what may lie hidden in these [works], I know not.” Luther, in the compendium of the Articles of his perfidy, article 35, uses these words for the confirmation of his perverse dogma, whereby he teaches that no just man is certain that he does not always sin mortally in every work [he does]. John [Fisher], Bishop of Rochester, writing against Luther, demonstrates that he adduced these words truncatedly and beside the point; by which [words] indeed we are admonished to fear concerning good works — not that those good and holy works are (as Luther affirms) evil, and annexed to sins, but lest, from the consideration of them, we be either lifted up into pride, or slip into sloth and torpor.² And that this was Gregory’s meaning, the preceding words of his — craftily omitted by Luther — most openly indicate.