“If you are a preacher of grace, then preach a real, not a fictitious grace; if your grace is real, then let your sin also be real and not fictitious. God does not save those who merely fancy themselves sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe more boldly still (‘_esto peccator et pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide_’); and rejoice in Christ, Who is the conqueror of sin, death and the world; we must sin as long as we are what we are. This life is not the abode of justice, but we look for a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, as Peter says. It suffices that by the riches of the glory of God we have come to know the Lamb, Who taketh away the sin of the world; sin shall not drag us away from Him, even should we commit fornication or murder thousands and thousands of times a day. Do you think that the price and the ransom paid for our sins by this sublime Lamb is so insignificant? Pray boldly, for you are in truth a very bold sinner.” This is language of the most extravagant paradox. What it really means is very objectionable. Melanchthon is to pray very fervently with the hope of obtaining the Divine assistance against sin, but at the same time he is to sin boldly. This language of the Wartburg is not unlike that in which Luther wrote, from the Castle of Coburg, to his pupil, Hieronymus Weller, when the latter was tempted to despair, to encourage him against the fear of sin (above, p. 175 f.); that letter too was written in anguish of spirit and in a state of excitement similar to what he had experienced in the Wartburg. We might, it is true, admit that, in these words Luther gave the rein to his well-known inclination to put things in the strongest light, a tendency to be noticed in some of his other statements quoted above. On the other hand, however, the close connection between the compromising words and his whole system of sin and grace, can scarcely be denied; we have here something more than a figure of rhetoric. Luther’s endeavour was to reassure, once and for all, Melanchthon, who was so prone to anxiety. The latter shrank from many of the consequences of Luther’s doctrines, and at that time was possibly also a prey to apprehension concerning the forgiveness of his own sins. Hence the writer of the letter seeks to convince him that the strength of the fiducial faith preached by himself, Luther, was so great, that no sense of sin need trouble a man. To have “real, not fictitious, sin” to him, means as much as: Be bold enough to look upon yourself as a great sinner; “Be a sinner,” means: Do not be afraid of appearing to be a sinner in your own sight; Melanchthon is to be a bold sinner in his own eyes in order that he may be the more ready to ascribe all that is good to the grace which works all. Thus far there is nothing which goes beyond Luther’s teaching elsewhere. The passage is, however, more than a mere paradoxical way of expressing the doctrine dear to him.