Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/159

 notice what this meant. Since the formulation of the doctrine of the Sacrament of Penance, the theory had been that all guilt of sin and all eternal punishment were remitted in the priestly Absolution which followed the confession of the penitent. The Sacrament of Penance had abolished guilt and hell. But there remained actual sins to be punished because the righteousness of God demanded it, and this was done in the temporal pains of Purgatory. The "common man," if he thought at all on the matter, might be excused if he considered that guilt and hell, if taken away by the one hand, were restored by the other, and that the whole series of questions discussed by the theologians amounted to little more than dialectical fencing with phrases. He was taught and he believed that punishment awaited him for his sins-and a temporal punishment which might last thousands of years was not very different from an eternal one in his eyes. With these thoughts the Indulgence was offered to him as a sure way of easing his conscience and avoiding the punishment which he knew to be deserved. He had only to pay a sum of money and perform the canonical good deed enjoined, whatever it might be, and he had the remission of his punishment and the sense that God's justice was satisfied. It was this practical ethical effect of the Indulgences, and not the theological explanations about them, which stirred Luther to make his protest.

Luther's Theses, in their lack of precise theological definition and of logical arrangement, are singularly unlike what might have been expected from a professional theologian; and they contain repetitions which might easily have been avoided. They are not a clearly reasoned statement of a theological doctrine; still less are they the programme of a scheme of reformation. They are simply ninety-five sledge-hammer blows directed against the most flagrant ecclesiastical abuse of the age. They look like the utterance of a man who was in close contact with the people, who had been shocked at statements made by the preachers of the Indulgence, who had read a good deal of the current theological opinions published in defence of Indulgences, and had noted several views which he longed to contradict as publicly as possible. They are prefaced with the expression of love and desire to elucidate the truth. They read as if they were addressed to the " common man " and appealed to his common sense of spiritual things. Luther had told the assembly of clergy, who met at Leitzkau in 1512 to discuss the affairs of the Church, that every true reformation must begin with individual men, and that it must have for its centre the regenerate heart, for its being an awakening faith, and for its inspiration the preaching of a pure Gospel.

The note which he sounded in this, his earliest utterance which has come down to us, is re-echoed in the Theses. It is heard in the opening sentences. The penitence which Christ requires is something more than a momentary expression of sorrow; it is an habitual thing which lasts continuously during the whole of the believer's life; outward