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232 "14. Although Christ has given us many signs to know when the day of his coming is at our door, yet no one knows this day save God alone, I have firmly withstood John Hut and his followers, because they have named a specific time for the last day, namely, next Whitsunday, and have preached this to the people and led them astray [exhorting them] to sell house and goods, to leave wife and child, and have misled the simple to leave their work and run after them,—an error that has sprung from a gross misunderstanding of the Scripture.

"15. The prayers of Christ's faithful ones are advantageous.

"16. Concerning confession I have hitherto preached that the Scriptures teach three kinds of confession: one before God, another before the man whom we have wronged, and the third before the Church through acknowledgment of sins.

"17. The Church is an external assembling and community of believers in one Lord, one faith and one baptism.

"18. Whoever preserves his virginity, has a precious jewel. Aged widows should be received into the Church.

"19. Fasts ought to be observed.

"20. Sundays should be observed. Certain holidays—such as Christmas, Easter, Whitsunday—I am well contented [to observe], but not so large a number, as I disputed more than twenty years ago at Freiburg, De non multiplicandis festis.

"21. On the fast days one should eat no meat.

"22. The ten commandments should be frequently taught to the people in these troublous days. I have taught this in my catechism, where I have set down the