The first and best plan would be for the pontiffs and preachers to dissuade and deter the people from their proneness to the making of vows, to show them how the visiting of the Holy Land, Rome, Compostella,[27] and other holy places, as well as zeal in fastings, prayers, and works chosen by themselves, are nothing when compared with the works commanded by God and the vows which we have taken in baptism.[28] These vows every one can keep in his own home by doing his duty toward his neighbors, his wife, his children, his servants, his masters, and thereby gain incomparably greater merit than he can find by fulfilling vows to do works chosen by himself and not commanded by God. The foolish opinion of the common people and the ostentation of the Bulls[29] have brought it to pass that these vows of pilgrimages, fastings, prayers, and other works of the kind far outweigh in importance the works of God's Law, although we never have sufficient strength to do these last works. For my part, I could wish that there should not henceforth be any vows among Christian people except those which we take in baptism, and this, indeed, seems formerly to have been the case; and I would wish all to understand what is required of them, namely, that they be obedient to the commandments of God. For the vows of baptism seem to have been altogether cheapened by the too great practice, parade, dispensation, and redemption of these other vows. Let us put all our strength to the task, I say, and we shall find that we have vowed in baptism more than we are ever able to perform.

Some vows, including oaths, are made to men, others to God. Those made to men are admitted to be binding, so far and so long as he may desire, to whom the vow is made. Accordingly, it should be known that, as Gerson correctly thinks, the oaths and vows usually taken in the Universities or to worldly lords[30] ought not to be so rigorously regarded that every violation of them should be regarded as the breaking of a vow or an act of perjury. It is more just not to consider vows of this kind broken unless they are violated out of contempt and obstinate malice. It is otherwise in things that are vowed to God.

[Sidenote: Vows Made to God]

In vows made to God, I see dispensation granted by the pontiffs, but I shall never be persuaded that he is safe to whom such a dispensation is granted. For such a vow is of divine law, and no pontiff, either mediate or supreme, has any more authority in this matter than any Christian brother, though I know that certain of the Decretals and the Glosses on the Decretals venture many statements about it which I do not believe.

This, however, I would readily believe, that a vow of chastity given before puberty, neither holds nor binds, because he who made the vow was ignorant of what he was promising, since he had not yet felt the "thorn of the flesh." [2 Cor. 12:7] It is my pious opinion that such a vow is counted by God as foolish and void, and that the fathers of the monasteries should be forbidden by a general edict of the Church to receive a man before his twentieth, or at least his eighteenth, year, and girls before their fifteenth or sixteenth, if we are really concerned about the care of souls.

[Sidenote: Commutation of Vows]

It is also a great piece of boldness, in commuting or remitting vows, to impose what they call "a better work." In the eyes of God there is no difference in works, and He judges works not according to their number or greatness, but according to the disposition of the doer; moreover, "the Lord is the weigher of spirits," [Rom. 8:27] as the Scripture says, and He often prefers the manual labor of the poor artisan to the fasting and prayer of the priest, of which we find an illustration in St. Anthony and the shoemaker of Alexandria.[31] Since these things are so, who shall be so bold and presumptuous as to commute a vow into some "better work"? But these things will have to be spoken of elsewhere, for here we have undertaken to speak of confession only as it concerns the Commandments of God, for the quieting and composing of consciences which are troubled by scruples.

[Sidenote: Abuses of Penance]

I shall add but one thing. There are many who set perilous snares for married folk, especially in case of incest; and when any one (for these things can happen, nay, alas! they do happen) has defiled the sister of his wife, or his mother-in-law, or one related to him in any degree of consanguinity, they at once deprive him of the right to pay the debt of matrimony, and nevertheless they suffer him not, nay, they forbid him, to desert his wife's bed. What monstrous thing is this? What new remedy for sin? What sort of satisfaction for sin? Does it not show how these tyrants make laws for other men's infirmity and indulge their own? Show me the law-giver, however penitent and chaste, who would allow such a law to be made for himself. They put dry wood on the fire and say, Do not burn; they put a man in a woman's arms and forbid him to touch her or know her; and they do this on their own authority and without the command of God. What madness! 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.

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? [Matt. 23:4] 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. Thus in the end it signifies one thing and works another thing for miserable sinners, because priestlings, impious and unlearned in the law of the Lord, administer the Church of God, which they have filled with their laws and their dreams.

Here follows, in the original, a paraphrase of the apocryphal Prayer of Manasseh.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Luther quotes from the Vulgate and frequently from memory, a fact which should always be remembered in comparing his quotations from the text of Scripture.

[2] Vulgate, Justus prior est accusator.

[3] The apocryphal Prayer of Manasseh was included by Luther as an appendix to this treatise.

[4] Augustine Conf., X, 29.

[5] i. e., Forced to confess hidden sins.

[6] The so-called "science of casuistry," by which the moral value of an act is determined and the exact degree of guilt attaching to a given sin is estinated.

[7] Cf. Small Catechism, "Of Confession," Ques. "What sins ought we to confess?"

[8] The decrees of the Popes collected in the Canon Law. The decretal here referred to is C. Omnis Utriusque, X. de poententiis et remissionibus.

[9] Anecdotes illustrating the doctrines of the Church were favorite contents of the sermons in Luther's day. Various collections of these edifying legends are still extant. Cf. p. 224, and note.

[10] i. e., By thinking of the nature of confession.

[11] The reader of this minute classification of sins, which could be duplicated out of almost any manual of casuistry, may judge for himself whether Luther was correct in calling it a "riot of distinctions."

[12] Luther steadily maintained that the Ten Commandments were a complete guide to holy living and that every possible sin his prohibited somewhere in the Decalogue. See, beside the various smaller treatises (Kurze Unterweisung wie man beichten soll (1518), Kurze Form des zehn Gobte (1520), etc.), the large Discourse on Good Works, below, pp. 184 ff.

[13] The writings mentioned are found in the Weimar Ed., Vol I, pp. 250 ff, 258 ff, 398 ff. See above, p. 75, note 1.

[14] The Sentences of Peter the Lombard was the standard text-book of Medieval theology.

[15] "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.

[16] That part of the liturgy of the Mass in which the miraculous transformation of the elements into the Body and Blood of Christ is believed to take place.

[17] i. e., Of the sacrament of confession.

[18] The fixed hours of daily prayer observed in the monasteries, afterward applied to the liturgy for these services, viz., the Breviary. The daily reading of this breviary at the appointed hours is required of all clergy.

[19] An Italian saint, d. 482, noted for the strictness and severity of his ascetic practices.

[20] Professor of the University of Paris; one of the most popular and famous of the later Scholastics. He died 1429.

[21] Vulgate, "Cor ejus paratus est."

[22] We would say, "the whole thing in a nutshell."

[23] i. e., Sins for which the confessor was not allowed to grant absolution without reference to some higher Church authority, to whose absolution they were "reserved." See Introduction, p. 79.

[24] The power to "bind and loose" (Matt. 16:19), i. e., to forgive and to retain sins (John 20:23).

[25] The Roman Church distinguished between the "guilt" and the "penalty" of sin. It was thought possible to forgive the former and retain the latter. Submission to the penalty is "satisfaction." See Introduction to XCV. Theses, p. 19.

[26] Votum satisfactionis. It was and is the teaching of the Roman Church that, where the actual reception of any sacrament is impossible, the earnest desire to receive it suffices for salvation. The desire is known as the votum sacramenti.

[27] In Spain. The shrine of St. James at that place was a famous resort for pilgrims. Cf. below, p. 191, and note.

[28] See the Treatise on the Sacrament of Baptism, above, pp. 68 ff.

[29] Luther doubtless refers to the decrees of the popes by which special rewards were attached to worship at certain shrines.

[30] The oath of office and the oath of allegiance.

[31] The story is repeated by Melanchthon in the Apology of the Augsburg Confession, Ch. XIII, Art. xxvii, 38 (Book of Concord, Eng. Trans., p. 288). The "Alexander Coriarius" of text is misleading.