De convenientia institutorum Romanae Ecclesiae cum Evangelica libertate

1. Perhaps the Lutherans would admit that some sacraments can be compatible with Christian liberty,¹ but, in their opinion, the sacrament of Confession is in no way compatible with liberty.²

For, they say, what greater bondage can befall a person than to disclose to one man—and perhaps one never knew before—all the crimes he committed in the greatest possible secrecy, hidden from everyone? Is it not enough, to obtain pardon from him who searches the secrets of hearts, to lay bare one’s sins by an inward reckoning of the mind? What good, then, does that Confession whispered into a man’s ear do? Is God not able to forgive all our crimes without any arbiter at all?³ What, we think, could befall a person⁴ more vexing, burdensome, or harsh than auricular Confession, when at times he would not confess his crimes even under the greatest tortures? What people, nation, or religion—except the Christian—is pressed by so heavy a bondage? Yet Christ, the Supreme, assumed this mortal flesh of ours to set us free⁵ and redeem us from every kind of slavery.⁶

Confession of this kind was not established by Christ’s laws; it was a human invention,⁷ by which the Roman pontiffs sought to oppress the Christian people more harshly than Pharaoh oppressed the Hebrew people with hard labor in clay and brick. “For us, then,” he says, “who have enlisted in the army of Christ,⁸ it should be enough to confess with mind and thought to the most merciful God—provided we have faith that divine mercy will forgive our very crimes. For faith works salvation in everyone who believes.”⁹ And, writing to the Romans,¹⁰ the Apostle says: “The righteous lives by faith.” To the Galatians also:¹¹ “You are all children of God through faith, which is in Christ Jesus.” Christ himself, too, said to the woman whose many sins he had forgiven:¹² “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”¹³

2. Moreover, let the Lutherans tell me this: if Confession was not instituted by Christ’s disposition, but is rather a human invention, what did Christ’s words to Peter in Matthew 16 mean?¹⁴¹⁵ “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” He said to the other Apostles as well: “Whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”¹⁶ What, I ask, does this power of binding and loosing entail? It is not a power to bind and loose bodies, but to free human souls from sins¹⁷ and bind them; to open the gates of the heavenly homeland and also to close them.¹⁸ Hence the keys of the kingdom of heaven are entrusted to Peter, and all the Apostles are told:¹⁹ “Whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven them; whose sins you retain, they are retained.” The man who thinks that these passages concern faith rather than authority is mad. But since binding or loosing a person requires a judgment, and every judgment requires knowledge of the case, the person entrusted with the power to forgive or retain sins²⁰ must have some knowledge of the crimes of the person being judged. How, then, can anyone know a person’s hidden crimes²¹ unless that person reveals himself and lays his sins before the judge? “For if you expect the physician’s services,” says Boethius,²² “you must uncover your wound.” Thus, when Christ our lawgiver bestowed on the Apostles the power of binding and loosing, he instituted the sacraments of Confession and Penance,²³ and willed that anyone who recognizes in himself a stain of sin should disclose it privately to a priest and submit to the penalty he determines, if he wishes both to obtain pardon and to have at least some part of the deserved punishment remitted.

3. The Lutherans may perhaps ask what reasonable purpose can be assigned to this institution.²⁴ Could not someone who had lost his life through straying from divine law return to God’s grace without this more private Confession? Certainly. Divine power is not confined to these rites of ours.²⁵ Nevertheless, since the Passion of Christ, the Best and Highest, is the cause of our universal salvation, its power must be conveyed to us through certain particular causes.²⁶²⁷ For in the order of nature, too, lower agents, as particular causes, cooperate by a kind of natural necessity in generation with the heavenly power, which has the character of a universal cause. We call these particular causes of our salvation sacraments when they are sensible.²⁸ Therefore, just as Baptism washes away original sin, so the sacrament of Confession, as a particular cause of our salvation, washes away actual sin.

4. We also read in the Gospel of a kind of image and figure of this institution. For it is related that those who came to John to be baptized confessed their sins.²⁹³⁰ Likewise, Christ commanded lepers whom he had cleansed to show themselves to the priests,³¹³² plainly indicating that all those who were to be cleansed from the filth of sin by the power of his Passion must uncover their leprosy—that is, their sins—to priests.

If anyone should insist that the Gospel makes no explicit mention of this sacramental Confession, it should be enough for him that this sacrament of Confession is contained in the power of binding and loosing, first bestowed on Peter and then on all the Apostles.³³ Add that the Apostle James himself most plainly proclaimed it in chapter five of his letter³⁴ in these words: “Confess your sins to one another.”

5. But, the Lutherans will say, what do the words of the Apostle James have to do with this more private Confession?³⁵ For he does not command us to disclose our crimes to a priest; rather, he urges us to confess our sins to one another—that is, to reveal our sins to one another, reciprocally. The Lutherans fail to notice that the Apostle urges us to the Confession he supposed Christ had instituted; and since, as we showed above, Christ instituted the Confession made to priests, we are not instructed to disclose our crimes to everyone indiscriminately, whatever sort of people they may be, but to confess them more privately to those entrusted with authority to judge sins.³⁶ If, then, this sacramental Confession is established by the laws of Jesus Christ,³⁷ those who think it departs from evangelical liberty are, as the saying goes, entirely on the wrong road. For nothing ordained by Christ’s law departs from evangelical liberty.³⁸

6. They may perhaps object again:³⁹ suppose Christ’s laws establish that we confess into a priest’s ear; how can it be denied that the evangelical law prescribes no time for Confession? How, then, does the annual Confession which Pope Innocent III imposed on our shoulders⁴⁰ not conflict with Christian liberty?

But if they will consider what we have often repeated, they will see that this annual Confession, too, is compatible with our liberty. We have said that what the Roman prelate establishes for the advantage and benefit of Christians⁴¹ in no way impairs our liberty, even if at times it seems contrary to our own judgment. Often we freely and reasonably choose as a virtue what we see to be contrary to our inclination. But tell me: do we not plainly see that this annual Confession is exceedingly useful to the Christian people? Only those blinder than moles would fail to see it. For it is quite clear—indeed, perfectly clear—that those who neglect or despise this pontifical law become utterly depraved people and scorners of all sacred things; they even fall into such unspeakable crimes that one would consider them beasts rather than human beings. By contrast, those who diligently observe this annual Confession are formed in modesty, justice, and frugality, and continually grow into better conduct. There are also people who would readily turn their minds away from the Christian faith if they were not strengthened by the practice of annual Confession.⁴² Therefore no one should doubt that the Christian people reap the greatest benefit from this most holy law.⁴³ We are not, then, pressed by a new and harsh burden,⁴⁴ but the Supreme Pontiff, whose office is both to govern the Christian commonwealth and to interpret divine law, has fixed a time suited to human ways for what Christ’s laws commanded without specifying a time.

7. Moreover, nothing in our opinion—or rather, the opinion of the holy Fathers—is undermined by the fact that God can forgive all our crimes without this sacramental Confession, just as he perhaps forgave Mary Magdalene, if she was the sinner from whom seven demons had been cast out,⁴⁵⁴⁶ and perhaps Peter and Paul. For it is consistent with the absolute power of the divine majesty that, once we have attained the use of reason,⁴⁷⁴⁸ we are bound, for the reason we gave, to confess all our crimes into a priest’s ear each year.

8. This annual Confession should not be turned into an argument that Christians are unhappy or wretched because they alone are burdened by it. Other nations reject the practice of this more private Confession and so are deprived of its benefit and fruit.⁴⁹ As a result, they remain stained by the guilt of sin and bear the devil’s yoke continually; the Christian people, by contrast, are cleansed from the stain of sin and vindicated into the perpetual liberty of the soul, won for us by Christ’s blood.⁵⁰

9. Finally, it is no objection that faith works salvation in everyone who believes, and that the righteous lives by faith. This must be understood of a faith that both renders divine worship to Christ, the Best and Highest, and is joined to observance of Christian law. If someone, though washed in Christ’s baptism and believing in Christ, shuns Christian laws and Christian sacraments, his dry and monstrous faith, if I may call it so, is useless and harmful to his salvation. Indeed, he deserves a far heavier punishment, the more deeply he is stained by the mark of ingratitude toward Christ, who enrolled him among his people.⁵¹