A manual of the book of Psalms · Martin Luther
ADMONITORY OBSERVATIONS.
And here I will cease to show, like a schoolmaster, to which precept of the Decalogue, and to which member of the Lord’s Prayer each Psalm belongs; for from what I have already said upon these points, my seriously-disposed readers will be enabled to observe and judge for themselves. All the supplicatory Psalms belong to the second precept and to the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, for they honour and sanctify the name of the Lord. And the Psalms which teach, console, and give thanks for deliverance, belong to the second and third precepts of the Decalogue, and also to the first and third petitions of the Lord’s Prayer: for they teach us how, in truth, to keep holy the Sabbath day, how to worship God with the true and highest worship, and how to offer the most acceptable sacrifice; namely, the sacrifice of praise. And most of the Psalms refer to all those three precepts of the Decalogue, and to all those petitions of the Lord’s Prayer.
My reason for giving these hints respecting the commandments, and petitions of the Lord’s Prayer, to which the different Psalms belong, in this my brief summary of the contents of the Psalms, is this: to show that the whole Scripture flows from the Decalogue as from a fountain; and that in the Ten Commandments and in the Lord’s Prayer are contained the sum and substance of all theology or divinity; and that nothing can be taught in the Church more sublime or more excellent than these two parts of Divine revelation. For we see how the greatest prophets and Moses himself, drew their great and divine discourses from the first, the second, and the third Commandments; and, in a word, from the whole of the Decalogue; how diligently they weighed every thing and made it harmonize with this; and how they continually delivered new things, yet all with reference to this great general Decalogue. Hence indeed it was that Moses, that most eminent man of God, gave this precept, “These words (says he,) thou shalt meditate, when thou standest up and when thou liest down; and thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children,” &c.
In all their discourses and writings, therefore, the prophets and apostles allude and refer to the Decalogue or Ten Commandments. From these Ten Commandments flow all the doctrines, and all the godly living of the saints: for there is no holiness or godliness of life or true religion, apart from the Ten Commandments: because they are the never-failing inexhaustible fountain of all wisdom, righteousness, and of all perfection in the saints. Nor is there any of the complaints uttered by the Prophets or Apostles, nor will you find any other in all their discourses, but that against false prophets, hypocrites and false teachers, who, disregarding, nay, totally despising and spitting upon, the true and highest worship of God, (which is that of the first Commandment, that requires faith and the fear of God,) teach their own human dreams, which have nothing whatever to do with the Decalogue, and do not at all belong to it. Against these characters it is, (as we see in Moses himself, in Isaiah, in Jeremiah, and in the epistles of Paul and Peter,) that the Prophets and Apostles complain bitterly, and that with tears; against these it is that they cry aloud and wage war with all their powers; that they might preserve this true and highest worship of God, and might destroy from among men, hypocrisy and all human doctrines and fanatical dreams.
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.