The Apology of the Augsburg ConfessionMelanchthon, Philipp
Religion
The Apology of the Augsburg Confession
Melanchthon, Philipp
Lutheran Church -- Catechisms
In the second place, repentance and grace are obscured. For eternal
death is not atoned for by this compensation of works because it is
idle, and does not in the present life taste of death. Something
else must be opposed to death when it tries us. For just as the
wrath of God is overcome by faith in Christ, so death is overcome by
faith in Christ. Just as Paul says, 1 Cor. 16, 67: But thanks be to
God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. He
does not say: "Who giveth us the victory if we oppose our
satisfactions against death." The adversaries treat of idle
speculations concerning the remission of guilt, and do not see how in
the remission of guilt, the heart is freed by faith in Christ from
God's anger and eternal death. Since, therefore, the death of Christ
is a satisfaction for eternal death, and since the adversaries
themselves confess that these works of satisfactions are works that
are not due, but are works of human traditions, of which Christ says,
Matt. 16, 9, that they are vain acts of worship, we can safely affirm
that canonical satisfactions are not necessary by divine Law for the
remission of guilt, or eternal punishment, or the punishment of
purgatory.
But the adversaries object that vengeance or punishment is necessary
for repentance, because Augustine says that repentance is vengeance
punishing, etc.. We grant that vengeance or punishment is necessary
in repentance, yet not as merit or price, as the adversaries imagine
that satisfactions are. But vengeance is in repentance formally, i.e.,
because regeneration itself occurs by a perpetual mortification of
the oldness of life. The saying of Scotus may indeed be very
beautiful, that _poenitentia_ is so called because it is, as it were,
_poenae tenentia_, holding to punishment. But of what punishment, of
what vengeance, does Augustine speak? Certainly of true punishment,
of true vengeance, namely, of contrition, of true terrors. Nor do we
here exclude the outward mortifications of the body, which follow
true grief of mind. The adversaries make a great mistake if they
imagine that canonical satisfactions [their juggler's tricks,
rosaries, pilgrimages, and such like] are more truly punishments than
are true terrors in the heart. It is most foolish to distort the
name of punishment to these frigid satisfactions, and not to refer
them to those horrible terrors of conscience of which David says, Ps.
18, 4; 2 Sam. 22, 5: The sorrows of death compassed me. Who would
not rather, clad in mail and equipped, seek the church of James, the
basilica of Peter, etc., than bear that ineffable violence of grief
which exists even in persons of ordinary lives, if there be true
repentance?
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