expresses the general trend of the Catholic teaching on morality at that time, and refutes anew the unfounded charge that religious instruction for the people was entirely absent. “We see how mature and keen in many particulars was the moral sense in that much-abused period.... The author is not satisfied with merely an outward, pharisaical righteousness, but the spirit is what he everywhere insists on.... He also defines righteousness ... as absolute uprightness of spirit, thankful, devoted love of God and pure charity towards our neighbour, free from all ulterior motive.” These words, of the “Leipziger Zeitung” (“Wissenschaftliche Beilage,” No. 10, 1896), regarding the Leipzig “Beichtspiegel” of 1495, Falk applies equally to Wolff’s handbook for Confession.[857] This latter instruction dwells particularly on the need of “contrition, sorrow and grief for sin” on the part of the penitent. N. Paulus, in several articles, has furnished superabundant proof, that in those years, which some would have us believe were addicted to the crassest externalism, the need of contrition in Confession was earnestly dwelt upon in German religious writings.[858] Luther, however, even in the early days of his change, under the influence of a certain distaste and prejudice in favour of his own pet ideas, had conceived an aversion for Confession. Here again his opposition was based on purely personal, psychological grounds. The terrors he had endured in Confession owing to his curious mental constitution, his enmity to all so-called holiness-by-works--leading him to undervalue the Church’s ancient institution of Confession--and the steadily growing influence of his prejudices and polemics, alone explain how he descended so often to the most odious and untrue misrepresentations of Confession as practised by the Papists. What in the depths of his heart he really desired, and what he openly called for, viz. a Confession which should heal the wounds of the soul and, by an enlightened faith, promote moral betterment--that, alas, he himself had destroyed with a violent hand.