The confession, therefore, being entirely voluntary and a privilege, penitents are not to be tormented with "the ocean of distinctions" hitherto urged, such, e.g., as those between mortal and venial sins, whereof he says that "there is no doctor so learned as to draw accurately the distinction";[10] and between the inner impulses that may arise without the least consent of the will resulting from than, and those to which the will, in varying measure, may actually consent. On the contrary, it is not well to look too deeply into the abyss. When Peter began to count the waves, he was lost; when he looked away from them to Jesus, he was saved. Thus, while "the good purpose" to amend the life must be insisted upon as an indispensable accompaniment of every sincere confession, tender consciences may search within for such purpose, and be distressed because they cannot find satisfactory evidence of its presence. How excellent then the advice of this experienced pastor, that those thus troubled should pray for this "purpose" which they cannot detect; for no one can actually pray for such purpose without, in the prayer, having the very object he is seeking. So also he rules out of the sphere of the confession the violation of matters of purely ecclesiastical regulation. Nothing is to be regarded a sin except that which is a violation of one of the Ten Commandments. To make that a sin which God's law does not make sin, is only the next step to ecclesiastical regulations to the level of divine commands, we lower divine commands to the level of ecclesiastical regulations. Even Private Confession, therefore, useful as it is, when properly understood and practised, since it rests after all upon ecclesiastical rule, is so little to be urged as a matter of necessity that Luther here defends the suggestion of Gerson, that occasionally one should go to the Lord's Supper without having made confession, in order thereby to testify that it is in God's mercy and His promise that we trust, rather than in the value of any particular outward observance.