As long as a man is persuaded that he can make even the smallest contribution to his salvation, he remains self-confident and does not utterly despair of himself, and so is not humbled before God. Such a man plans out for himself a position, an occasion, a work, which shall bring him final salvation, but which will not.

The Bible is alive, it speaks to me; it has feet, it runs after me; it has hands, it lays hold of me.

Jews and papists are ungodly wretches; they are two stockings made of one piece of cloth.

The irony is I stopped going to church a few weeks later.

What man, if he were God, would humble himself to lie in the feedbox of a donkey or to hang upon a cross?

In short, I will preach it [the Word], teach it, write it, but I will constrain no man by force, for faith must come freely without compulsion. Take myself as an example. I opposed indulgences and all the papists, but never with force. I simply taught, preached, and wrote God's Word; otherwise I did nothing. And while I slept, or drank Wittenberg beer with my friends Philip and Amsdorf, the Word so greatly weakened the papacy that no prince or emperor ever inflicted such losses upon it. I did nothing; the Word did everything.

The bible is the cradle that holds the Christ, without him it is nothing more than wood and straw.