"Diverting Charity" - The Best of Bainton's Biography of Martin Luther

"Indulgences are positively harmful to the recipient because they impede salvation by diverting charity and inducing a false sense of security. Christians should be taught that he who gives to the poor is better than he who receives a pardon. He who spends his money for indulgences instead of relieving want receives not the indulgence of the pope but the indignation of God. We are told that money should be given by preference to the poor only in the case of extreme necessity. I suppose we are not to clothe the naked and visit the sick. What is extreme necessity? Why, I ask, does natural humanity have such goodness that it gives itself freely and does not calculate necessity but is rather solicitous that there should not be any necessity? And will the charity of God, which is incomparably kinder, do none of these things? Did Christ say, 'Let him that has a cloak sell it and buy an indulgence'? Love covers a multitude of sins and is better than all the pardons of Jerusalem and Rome." 
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(Quotation from the 95 Theses. Chapter IV, The Onslaught, p. 82, boldfaced added)

Bainton, Roland. 1978. 
​Here I Stand: A Life of Martin Luther. Nashville:Abingdon-Cokesbury Press. 
Original publication date: 1952.
​Reprint 2013. Also available on Audible and Kindle.

Available for free at: 
https://archive.org/details/hereistandalifeo005163mbp