An Old Lutheran Quote

From Luther's Easter homily, 1540, in the Church Postils (VII:188, 189):

These passages, as is also stated elsewhere, teach that a Christian by faith lays hold upon the purity of Christ, for which reason he is also regarded pure and begins to make progress in purity; for faith brings the Holy Spirit, who works in man, enabling him to withstand and to subdue sin... Such, we must know, is the nature of Christ's office and dominion in his Church that though he really does instantaneously, through faith, confer upon us his purity, and by the Spirit transforms our hearts, yet the work of transformation and purification is not at once completed. Daily Christ works in us and purges us, to the end that we grow in purity daily. This work He carries on through the agency of the Word, admonishing, reproving, correcting and strengthening... Christ also uses crosses and afflictions in effecting this end.... The sins remaining in the saints after conversion are various evil inclinations, lusts, and desires natural to man and contrary to the law of God. The saints, as well as others, are conscious of these sins, but with this difference: they do not permit themselves to be overcome thereby so as to obey the sins, allowing them free reign; they do not yield to, but resist such sins, and, as Paul expresses it here, incessantly purge themselves therefrom. The sins of the saints, according to him, are the very ones which they purge out. Those who obey their lusts, however, do not do this, but give free reign to the flesh and sin against the protest of their own conscience...If you persist in that which is evil regardless of the voice of conscience, you cannot say, nor believe, that you have God's favor.