to the grace of God and the word of His promise, the transition from the one mode of thought to the other is very apparent.
In the Kurze Unterweisung wie man beichten soll of 1519, of which this is a Latin re-elaboration, and, therefore, intended more for the educated than as a popular presentation, he has advanced so far as to warn against the attempt to make an exhaustive enumeration of sins. He advises that the confession be made in the most general terms, covering sins both known and unknown. "If one would confess all mortal sins, it may be done in the following words: 'Yea, my whole life, and all that I do, act, speak, and think, is such as to be deadly and condemnable.' For if one regard himself as being without mortal sin, this is of all mortal sins the most mortal."[1] According to this maturer view, the purpose of the most searching self-examination is to exhibit the utter impossibility of ever fathoming the depth of corruption that lies beneath the surface. The reader of the Tessaradecas will recall Luther's statement there, that it is of God's great mercy that man is able to see but a very small portion of the sin within him, for were he to see it in its full extent, he would perish at the sight. The physician need not count every pustule on the body to diagnose the disease as small-pox. A glance is enough to determine the case. The sins that are discovered are the symptoms of the one radical sin that lies beneath them all.[2] The cry is no longer "Mea peccata, mea peccata," as though these recognized sins were the exceptions to a life otherwise without a flaw, but rather, overwhelmed with confusion, the penitent finds in himself nothing but sin, except for what he has by God's grace alone. Most clearly does Luther enforce this in his exposition of the Fifty-first Psalm, of 1531, a treatise we most earnestly commend to those who desire fuller information concerning Luther's doctrine of sin, and his conception of the value of confession and absolution. He shows that it is not by committing a particular sin that we become sinners, but that the sin is committed because our nature is still sinful, and that the poisonous tree has grown from roots deeply imbedded in the soil. We are sinners not because particular acts of sin have been devised and carried to completion, but before the acts are committed we are sinners; otherwise such fruits would not have been borne. A bad tree can grow from nothing but a bad root.[3]
- ↑ "Ja, mein ganzes Leben, und alles, das ich thu, handel, red und gedenk, ist also gethan, das es todlich und vordammlich ist." These are almost the words of the public confessional prayer in the Kirchenbuch of the General Council of the Lutheran Church in America: "Also dass alle meine Natur und Wesen sträflich und verdämmlich ist."
- ↑ Erl. Ed., op. var. arg., IV, 89 sq. "Si enim suum malum sentiret, infernum sentiret, nam infernum in se ipso habet." See this volume, p. 115 f.
- ↑ Erl. Ed., op. ex. lat., XIX, 1-154.
