Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 2.djvu/160

 deeds of penitence are necessary to manifest the real penitence which is inward and which is the source of a continuous mortification of the flesh; confession is also a necessary thing because the true penitent must be prepared to humble himself; but the one thing needful is the godly contrition of the heart. In the Theses Luther makes six distinct assertions about Indulgences and their efficacy:—(1) Indulgence is and can only be the remission of a canonical penalty; the Church can remit what the Church has imposed; it cannot remit what God has imposed. (2) An Indulgence can never remit guilt; the Pope himself is unable to do this. (3) It cannot remit the divine punishment for sin-God keeps that in His own hands. (4) It has no application to souls in Purgatory; for penalties imposed by the Church can only refer to the living; death dissolves them; all that the Pope can do for souls in Purgatory is by prayer and not by any power of keys. (5) The Christian who has true repentance has already received pardon from God altogether apart from an Indulgence and does not need it; and Christ demands this true repentance from everyone. (6) The Treasure of Merits has never been properly defined, and is not understood by the people; it cannot be the merits of Christ and the Saints, because these act without any intervention from the Pope; it can mean nothing more than that the Pope, having the power of the keys, can remit Satisfactions imposed by the Church; the true treasure of merits is the holy Gospel of the grace of God.

The Theses had a circulation which for the times was unprecedented. They were known all over Germany, Myconius assures us, within a fortnight. This popularity was no doubt partly due to the growing dislike of papal methods of gaining money; but there must have been more than that in it; Luther was only uttering aloud what thousands of pious Germans had been thinking. The lack of all theological treatment must have increased their popularity. The sentences were plain and easily understood. They kept within the field of simple religious and moral truth. Their effect was so immediate that the sales of Indulgences began to decline. The Theses appealed to all those who had been brought up in the simple evangelical family piety and who had not forsaken it; and they appealed also to all who shared that non-ecclesiastical piety which had been rising and spreading during the last decades of the fifteenth century. Both these forces, purely religious, at once rallied round the author.

Theologians were provokingly silent about the Theses. Luther's intimate friends, who agreed with his opinions, thought that he had acted with great rashness. His Bishop had told him that he saw nothing to object to in his declarations, but advised him to write no more on the subject. Before^tEe end of the year Tetzel published Counter-Theses, written for him by Conrad Wimpina, of Frankfort on the Oder. John Eck (Maier), by far the ablest of Luther's opponents, had in circulation, though probably unpublished, an answer, entitled Obelisks, which was in