Before Luther’s day Confession had been extolled on higher grounds than merely on account of the comfort and instruction it afforded. It had been recognised as a true Sacrament instituted by Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and committed by Him with the words “Whose sins you shall forgive,” etc. (John xx. 22 f.), to the exercise of duly appointed ministers. Yet the earlier religious literature had not been behindhand in pointing out how great a boon it was for the human heart to be able to pour its troubles into the ears of a wise and kindly guide, who could impart a true absolution and pour the balm of consolation and the light of instruction into the soul kneeling humbly before him as God’s own representative. As regards the instruction, on which Luther lays such stress as the “main reason” for retaining the practice, the Catholic Confession handbooks of that period, particularly some recently re-edited, show how careful the Church was about this matter. Franz Falk has recently made public three such handbooks, of which very few copies were hitherto known.[855] One of these is the work of a priest of Frankfurt a. M., Magister Johann Wolff (Lupi), and was first published in 1478; the second is a block-book containing a preparation for Confession, probably printed at Nuremberg in 1475; the third an Augsburg manual of Confession printed in 1504. The last two were intended more for popular use and give the sins in the order of the Decalogue. The first, by Wolff, pastor of St. Peter’s at Frankfurt, consists of two parts, one for children, the other for “older people, learned or unlearned,” containing examinations of conscience, very detailed and explicit in some parts, into the sins against the Ten Commandments, the seven capital sins, and, finally, the sins committed with “the five outward senses.” The examination of conscience for children, for the sake of instruction also includes the Our Father, Hail Mary, Creed and Decalogue, also the list of capital sins, Sacraments and Eight Beatitudes. The copious Latin tags from Peter Lombard, Scotus, Gerson, etc., point to the manual having been meant primarily as a guide for the clergy, on whom an appendix also impresses the advantages of a frequent explanation of the Ten Commandments from the pulpit. Schoolmasters too, so the manual says, should also be urged to instruct on the Commandments those committed to their care. Luther’s manual on Confession contains so many echoes of Wolff’s work (or of other Catholic penitential handbooks) that one of Wolff’s Protestant editors remarks: “Such agreement is certainly more than a mere chance coincidence,” and, further: “It is difficult in view of the great resemblance of thought, and in places even of language, not to assume that the younger man is indebted to his predecessor.”[856] However this may be, Wolff’s work, though holding no very high place as regards either arrangement or style, clearly