ignoring the sinfulness of that which God has forbidden; for in raising ecclesiastical regulations to the level of divine commands, we lower divine commands to the level of ecclesiastical regulations. Even Private Confession, therefore, useful as it is, when properly understood and practised, since it rests after all upon ecclesiastical rule, is so little to be urged as a matter of necessity that Luther here defends the suggestion of Gerson, that occasionally one should go to the Lord's Supper without having made confession, in order thereby to testify that it is in God’s mercy and His promise that we trust, rather than in the value of any particular outward observance.
The treatment of "Reserved Cases," with which this tract ends, shows the moderation and caution with which Luther is moving, but, at the same time, how the new wine is working in the old bottles, which soon must break. The principle of "the reservation of cases" he discusses in his Address to the German Nobility.[1] It is criticized also in Augsburg Confession, Article XXVIII, 2, 41; Apology of the Augsburg Confession, English Translation, pp. 181, 212. The Roman Catholic dogma is officially presented in the Decrees of Trent, Session XIV, Chapter 7,[2] viz., "that certain more atrocious and more heinous crimes be absolved not by all priests, but only by the highest priests." Thus the power is centralized in the pope, and is delegated for exercise in ordinary cases to each particular parish-priest within the limits by which he is circumscribed, but no farther.[3] The contrast is between delegated and reserved rights. The Protestant principle is that all the power of the Church is in the Word of God which it administers; that wherever all the Word is, there also is all the power of the Church; and hence that, according to divine right, all pastors have equal authority. For this reason, Luther here declares that in regard to secret sins, i. e., those known only to God and the penitent, no reservation whatever is to be admitted. But there is still a distinction which he is ready to concede. It has to do with public offences where scandal has been given. As "the more flagrant and more heinous crimes," if public, have to do with a wider circle than the members of a particular parish, the reparation for the offence should be as extensive as the scandal which it has created. In the Apology, Melanchthon claims that such reservation should be limited to the ecclesiastical penalties to be inflicted, but that it had not been intended to comprise also the guilt involved; it was a reservatio poenae, but not a reservatio culpae.[4] Luther suggests the same here, but with more than usual caution.
- ↑ See Vol. II. of this edition.
- ↑ Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum, sec. 782; Schaff's Creeds of Christendom.
- ↑ "As though the Word of God cannot forgive sins, except where power derived from the Pope assist it." Chemnitz, Examen Concilii Tridentini (Preuss ed.), p. 456.
- ↑ Apology, p. 212: "There is a reservation of canonical punishments; there is not a reservation of guilt before God in those who are truly converted."
