The Apology of the Augsburg ConfessionMelanchthon, Philipp
Religion
The Apology of the Augsburg Confession
Melanchthon, Philipp
Lutheran Church -- Catechisms
But, nevertheless, the adversaries acknowledge that satisfactions are
of no profit for the remission of guilt. Yet they imagine that
satisfactions are of profit in redeeming from the punishments,
whether of purgatory or other punishments. For thus they teach that
in the remission of sins, God [without means, alone] remits the guilt,
and yet, because it belongs to divine justice to punish sin, that He
commutes eternal into temporal punishment. They add further that a
part of this temporal punishment is remitted by the power of the keys,
but that the rest is redeemed by means of satisfactions. Neither
can it be understood of what punishments a part is remitted by the
power of the keys, unless they say that a part of the punishments of
purgatory is remitted, from which it would follow that satisfactions
are only punishments redeeming from purgatory. And these
satisfactions, they say, avail even though they are rendered by those
who have relapsed into mortal sin, as though indeed the divine
displeasure could be appeased by those who are in mortal sin. This
entire matter is fictitious, and recently fabricated without the
authority of Scripture and the old writers of the Church. And not
even Longobardus speaks in this way of satisfactions. The
scholastics saw that there were satisfactions in the Church; and they
did not notice that these exhibitions had been instituted both for
the purpose of example, and for testing those who desired to be
received by the Church. In a word, they did not see that it was a
discipline, and entirely a secular matter. Accordingly, they
superstitiously imagined that these avail not for discipline before
the Church, but for appeasing God. And just as in other places they
frequently, with great inaptness, have confounded spiritual and civil
matters [the kingdom of Christ, which is spiritual, and the kingdom
of the world, and external discipline], the same happens also with
regard to satisfactions. But the gloss on the canons at various
places testifies that these observances were instituted for the sake
of church discipline [should serve alone for an example before the
Church].
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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