Martin Luther

“ Sin is not drowned at once, or its consequences escaped in a moment. It is a graphic presentation in epitome of the entire work of grace with this subject. [8] Life, therefore, in the language of this treatise, is "a perpetual baptism." As the mark of our Christian profession, as the sacramental oath of the soldier of the cross, it is the solemn declaration of relentless warfare against sin, and of life-long devotion to Christ our Leader. As the true bride is responsive to no other love than that of her husband, so one faithful to his baptism is dead to all else. ”

“ Need of Faith In this our age, the consciences of almost all have been led astray by human doctrines into a false trust in their own righteousness and their own works, and knowledge about faith and trust in God has almost ceased. Therefore, for him who is about to go to confession, it is before all things necessary that he should not place his trust in his confession—either the confession which he is about to make or the confession which he has made—but that, with complete fulness of faith, he put his trust only in the most gracious promise of God ”

“ Nay, how can the priest know this, when he is set in judgment upon mortal sins alone? Can he know another’s heart who does not thoroughly know his own? Hence it comes that many people confess many things, not knowing whether they are sins or not; and to this they are driven by that sentence of Gregory, "A good mind will confess guilt even where there is no guilt." ”

“ But who may recount all the tyrannies with which the troubled consciences of penitent and confessing Christians are daily disturbed, by means of death-bringing "constitutions" and customs, administered by silly manikins, who only know how to bind and place on the shoulders of men burdens grievous and heavy to be borne, which they themselves are not willing to move with a finger? [64] So this most salutary sacrament of penance has become nothing else than a mere tyranny of the great, then a disease, and a means to the increase of sins. ”

“ For I fear that by our thanklessness we have deserved our blindness and become unworthy to behold such grace, though the whole world was, and still is, full of baptism and the grace of God. But we have been led astray in our own anxious works, afterwards in indulgences and such like false comforts, and have thought that we are not to trust God until we are righteous and have made satisfaction for our sin, as though we would buy His grace from Him or pay Him for it. ”

“ Again:—"What is this new piety of God and the pope, that for money they allow a man who is impious and their enemy to buy out of purgatory the pious soul of a friend of God, and do not rather, because of that pious and beloved soul's own need, free it for pure love's sake?" ”

“ For my own part, because I know that the laws of men ought to be subject to mercy, and be applied with mildness rather than with severity, I follow the custom and advice of those who think that in hidden sins no case is to be reserved, and therefore all penitents are to be absolved whose sins are hidden, as are the sins of the flesh, that is to say, every form of lust, the procuring of abortion, and the like. For it should not be presumed that any pope would be willing, in matters of hidden sin, to set so many snares and dangers for men's souls. ”

“ I mean a right conscience, not a conscience seared and deformed by human traditions, but a conscience which is expert in the commandments of God, and which knows that much more is to be left solely to the goodness of God than is to be committed to its own diligence.
But what if the devil, when a man is dying, raises the obstacle of sins which have not been confessed, as we read in many of the stories? ”

“ Baptism is so gracious and so great a thing that God will not count our sins against us, and as soon as we turn again from sin, everything is right, by virtue of baptism; meanwhile, therefore, I will live and do my own will, and afterwards, or when about to die, will remember my baptism and remind God of His covenant, and then fulfil the work and purpose of my baptism. ”

“ Finally, these men make the fasting of nature one thing, and the fasting of the Church another thing, and if one has thoughtlessly swallowed some drops of liquid, or has taken some medicine, they exclude him utterly from the sacrament, and make it a sin, even the very greatest sin. I wonder whence these men have the authority to set up such laws as these and to trouble consciences with sins of their own invention. ”

“ But Luther can be properly known and estimated only when he is allowed to speak for himself. He should be seen not through the eyes of others, but through our own. In order to judge the man we must know all sides of the man, and read the heaviest as well as the lightest of his works, the more scientific and theological as well as the more practical and popular, his informal letters as well as his formal treatises. ”

“ For I see what benefit it has brought to the churches, that men have begun to collect many books and great libraries, outside and alongside of the Holy Scriptures; and have begun especially to scramble together, without any distinction, all sorts of "Fathers," "Councils," and "Doctors." Not only has good time been wasted, and the study of the Scriptures neglected; but the pure understanding of the divine Word is lost, until at last the Bible has come to lie forgotten in the dust under the bench. ”

“ To be forgiven, a sin must be known and lamented, and confessed in all its details and circumstances to the priest, who, as a spiritual judge, proportions the amount of the satisfaction to be rendered by the penitent to the degree of guilt of the offence, as judged from the facts before him. Thus the debt has to be painfully and punctiliously worked off, sin by sin, as in the financial world a note may be extinguished by successive payments, dollar by dollar. Everything, therefore, is made to depend upon the fulness and completeness of the confession. ”

“ He is compelled to tax his memory with such a mass of details, and so to fill his heart with the business of rightly expressing his cares and anxieties, while seeking out forgotten sins or a way of confessing them, that he entirely loses the present pangs of conscience, and the whole profit and salutary effect of confession. When he is absolved, therefore, he rejoices not so much because he is absolved, as because he has freed himself once and for all from the wretched worry of confession ”

“ The common people are persuaded that to eat butter or eggs on fast-days is heretical; so cruelly do the laws of men rave in the Church of God! And we unconcernedly profit by this superstition of the people, nay, by this tyranny of ours, caring nothing that the commandments of God are taken in jest, so long as men tremble and turn pale at our laws. ”

“ I do not wish, however, that a man should always go to the altar without confession; but I say that it should be done sometimes, and then only for the arousing of trust in God and the destroying of trust in our own act of confession. For a man will hardly go to mass without guilt, if he thinks his forgiveness sure because he has confessed, rather than because God is merciful ”

“ My advice is that the confessor beware of tyrannical decrees or laws, and confidently sentence a sinner to some other penance, or totally abstain from punishing, leaving free to him the right of matrimony which has been given him not by man, but by God. For no angel in heaven, still less any man on earth, has the power to enjoin this penance, which is the burning occasion of continual sin. Wherefore they are not to be heeded who wish such things to be done, and the penitent is to be freed from this scruple and peril. ”

“ It is in order that a man may learn to trust more in the mercy of God than in his own confession or in his own diligence. For enough cannot be done toward shaking that accursed trust in our own works. It should be done for this reason, too, that if a man is assailed by some necessity, whether temptation or death, and those hidden sins begin to appear which he has never been able to see or to confess, then he may have, ready and prepared, a practice of trusting in the mercy which God offers to the unworthy ”

“ Thus you understand how a man becomes in baptism guiltless, pure and sinless, and yet continues full of evil inclinations, so that he is called pure only because he has begun to be pure, and has a sign and covenant of this purity, and is always to become more pure. Because of this God will not count against him the impurity which still cleaves to him, and, therefore, he is pure rather through the gracious imputation of God than through anything in his own nature ”

“ Finally, works of piety and love are infinitely better than indulgences, [13] and yet these are not preached with such ceremony or such zeal; nay, for the sake of preaching the indulgences they are kept quiet, though it is the first and the sole duty of all bishops that the people should learn the Gospel and the love of Christ, for Christ never taught that indulgences should be preached. How great then is the horror, how great the peril of a bishop, if he permits the Gospel to be kept quiet, and nothing but the noise of indulgences to be spread among his people! ”

“ There is no one whose good purpose is as great as it ought to be. Let a man, therefore, fearlessly seak from God what he knows he cannot find in himself, until the thought of a better life begin seriously and truly to please him, and his own life to displease him. For the doctrines about the forming of a good purpose, which have been handed down to us and are everywhere taught, are not to be understood in the sense that a man should of himself form and work out this good purpose. ”

“ For there is scarcely anything which deceives more penitents than that subtle and profound dissimulation by which they oftentimes pretend, even to themselves, a violent hatred of sin and a purpose to lead a better life. The unhappy outcome proves their insincerity, for after confession they quickly return to their natural bent, and, as though relieved of the great burden of confession, they live again at ease, careless and unmindful of their purpose ”

“ Christians are to be taught that the pope does not intend the buying of pardons to be compared in any way to works of mercy.
43. Christians are to be taught that he who gives to the poor or lends to the needy does a better work than buying pardons;
44. Because love grows by works of love, and man becomes better; but by pardons man does not grow better, only more free from penalty.
45. Christians are to be taught that he who sees a man in need, and passes him by, and gives [his money] for pardons, purchases not the indulgences of the pope, but the indignation of God. ”

“ Without denying the pope's right to the power of the keys, Luther wishes to come into the clear about the extent of the pope's jurisdiction, which does not reach as far as purgatory. He believes that the pope has the right to remit "penalties," but these penalties are of the same sort as those which were imposed in the early Church as a condition precedent to the absolution; they are ecclesiastical penalties merely, and do not extend beyond the grave; the true penalty of sin is hatred of self, which continues until entrance into the kingdom of heaven. ”

“ In harmony with the stress laid in this treatise upon the fact that baptism is a treasury of consolation offered to the faith of every individual baptised, is the great emphasis which Luther, in other places, was constrained to lay upon personal as distinguished from vicarious faith. Neither the faith of the sponsors, nor that of the Church, for which, according to Augustine, the sponsors speak, avails more than simply to bring the child to baptism, where it becomes an independent agent, with whom God now deals directly. ”

“ For the judgment of God can endure no sin. Therefore there is on earth no greater comfort than baptism, for through it we come under the judgment of grace and mercy, which does not condemn our sins, but drives them out by many trials. ”

“ Should All Mortal Sins be Confessed? Furthermore, we are so far from being able to know or confess all the mortal sins that even our good works are damnable and mortal, if God were to judge with strictness, and not to receive them with forgiving mercy. If, therefore, all mortal sins are to be confessed, it can be done in a brief word, by saying at once, "Behond, all that I am, my life, all that I do and say, is such that it is mortal and damnable" ”

“ Even though for our salvation we need to have the Holy Spirit and faith and divine language and divine works, nevertheless we must let the Prophets and Apostles sit at the desk, while we sit at their feet and listen to what they say. It is not for us to say what they must hear. ”