virtues, which supplanting the Decalog were to be memorized. Self-evidently, all this was not intended as a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ and to faith in the free grace of God, but merely to serve the interest of the Romish penances, satisfactions, and work-righteousness. Says Luther in the Smalcald Articles: "Here, too, there was no faith nor Christ, and the virtue of the absolution was not declared to him, but upon his enumeration of sins and his self-abasement depended his consolation. What torture, rascality, and idolatry such confession has produced is more than can be related." (485, 20.) The chief parts of Christian doctrine but little taught and nowhere correctly taught,--such was the chief hurt of the Church under the Papacy. In the course of time, however, even this deficient and false instruction gradually fell into decay. The influence of the Latin schools was not very far-reaching, their number being very small in proportion to the young. Public schools for the people did not exist in the Middle Ages. As a matter of fact not a single synod concerned itself specifically with the instruction of the young. (_H. R._ 10, 137.) At home, parents and sponsors became increasingly indifferent and incompetent for teaching. True, the reformers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries did attempt to elevate the instruction also in the Catechism. Geiler's sermons on the Lord's Prayer were published. Gerson admonished: "The reformation of the Church must begin with the young," and published sermons on the Decalog as models for the use of the clergy. John Wolf also urged that the young be instructed, and endeavored to substitute the Decalog for the prevalent catalogs of sins. The Humanists John Wimpheling, Erasmus, and John Colet (who wrote the _Catechyzon,_ which Erasmus rendered into Latin hexameters) urged the same thing. Peter Tritonius Athesinus wrote a similar book of instruction for the Latin schools. However, all of these attempts proved ineffectual, and even if successful, they would have accomplished little for truly Christian instruction, such as Luther advocated, since the real essence of Christianity, the doctrine of justification, was unknown to these reformers. Thus in the course of time the people, and especially the young, grew more and more deficient in the knowledge of even the simplest Christian truths and facts. And bishops and priests, unconcerned about the ancient canons, stolidly looked on while Christendom was sinking deeper and deeper into the quagmire of total religious ignorance and indifference. Without fearing contradiction, Melanchthon declared in his Apology: "Among the adversaries there is no catechization of the children whatever, concerning which even the canons give commands. ... Among the adversaries, in many regions [as in Italy and Spain], during the entire year no sermons are delivered, except in Lent." (325, 41.) 87. Medieval Books of Prayer and Instruction.