The Commandments a Guide to Confession sins are, without doubt, contained.[1] And not even all of these are to be considered, but the last two Commandments are to be excluded entirely from confession. Confession should be brief, and should be a confession chiefly of those sins which cause pain at the time of confession, and, as they say, "move to confession." For the sacrament of confession was instituted for the quieting, not for the disturbing, of the conscience.
For example, as regards the Commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," let the penitent quickly say in what manner he has given place to lust, either in act or word, or by consent, just as though he were describing himself entirely, with all his limbs and senses, in that Commandment. Why, then, should he uselessly bring in the five senses, the mortal sins, and the rest of that ocean of distinctions? So in the case of the Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill." Let him quickly say by what kind of wrath he has sinned, whether by hatred, slander or cursing, or by the act of murder itself. And so with the rest; as I have tried to show in my Preceptorium and my writings on the Decalogue.[2]
Let it not disturb anyone that in the Decretals on Penance and in the IV. Book of the Sentences[3] this matter is differently treated. For they all are full of human inventions; and no wonder! They have taken everything they say out of a certain apocryphal and unlearned book called De vera et falsa poenitentia,[4] which is widely circulated, and ascribed, by a lying title, to St. Augustine.
- ↑ Luther steadily maintained that the Ten Commandments were a complete guide to holy living and that every possible sin is prohibited somewhere in the Decalogue. See, beside the various smaller treatises (Kurze Unterweisung wie man beichten soll (1518), Kurze Form der zehn Gebote (1520), etc.), the large Discourse on Good Works, below, pp. 184 ff.
- ↑ The writings mentioned are found in the Weimar Ed., Vol. I, pp. 250 ff, 258 ff, 398 ff. See above, p. 75, note 1.
- ↑ The Sentences of Peter the Lombard was the standard text-book of Mediæval theology.
- ↑ "On True and False Penitence," now universally admitted not to have been written by St. Augustine, but passing under his name till after the Reformation.
