Brother Martin Luther, his pupil, sendeth greeting. I remember, dear Father, that once, among those pleasant and wholesome talks of thine, with which the Lord Jesus ofttimes gives me wondrous consolation, the word poenitentia[1] was mentioned. We were moved with pity for many consciences, and for those tormentors who teach, with rules innumerable and unbearable, what they call a modus confitendi.[2] Then we heard thee say as with a voice from heaven, that there is no true penitence which does not begin with love of righteousness and of God, and that this love, which others think to be the end and the completion of penitence, is rather its beginning. This word of thine stuck in me like a sharp arrow of the mighty, [Ps. 120:4] and from that time forth I began to compare it with the texts of Scripture which teach penitence. Lo, there began a joyous game! The words frollicked with me everywhere! They laughed and gamboled around this saying. Before that there was scarcely a word in all the Scriptures more bitter to me than "penitence," though I was busy making pretences to God and trying to produce a forced, feigned love; but now there is no word which has for me a sweeter or more pleasing sound than "penitence." For God's commands are sweet, when we find that they are to be read not in books alone, but in the wounds of our sweet Saviour. After this it came about that, by the grace of the learned men who dutifully teach us Greek and Hebrew, I learned that this word is in Greek metanoia and is derived from meta and noun, i. e., post and mentem,[3] so that poenitentia or metanoia is a "coming to one's senses," and is a knowledge of one's own evil, gained after punishment has been accepted and error acknowledged; and this cannot possibly happen without a change in our heart and our love. All this answers so aptly to the theology of Paul, that nothing, at least in my judgment, can so aptly illustrate St. Paul. Then I went on and saw that metanoia can be derived, though not without violence, not only from post and mentem, but also from trans and mentem, [4] so that metanoia signifies a changing[5] of the mind and heart, because it seemed to indicate not only a change of the heart, but also a manner of changing it, i. e., the grace of God. For that "passing over of the mind," [6] which is true repentance, is of very frequent mention in the Scriptures. Christ has displayed the true significance of that old word "Passover"; and long before the Passover, [Ex. 19:11] Abraham was a type of it, when he was called a "pilgrim," [1 Cor. 5:7] i. e., a "Hebrew," [7] that is to say, one who "passed over" into Mesopotamia, as the Doctor of Bourgos[8] learnedly explains. With this accords, too, the title of the Psalm [Ps. 39] in which Jeduthun, i. e., "the pilgrim," [9] is introduced as the singer.