not look far to find enough to prompt the confession of utter
helplessness and the casting of self unreservedly upon God's
mercy. "Bring to the confession only those sins that occur to
thee, and say: I am so frail and fallen that I need consolation
and good counsel. For the confession should be brief....No one,
therefore, should be troubled, even though he have forgotten his
sins. If they be forgotten, they are none the less forgiven. For
what God considers, is not how thou hast confessed, but His Word
and how thou hast believed." [5]

In this is made prominent the radical difference between the
Roman Catholic and the Lutheran conception of confession. In the
former, it is a part of penance, the second of the three elements
of "contrition," "confession," and "satisfaction," an absolute
condition of the forgiveness of every sin. In the Roman
confessional, sins are treated atomistically. Some are forgiven,
while others are still to be forgiven. Every sin stands by
itself, and requires separate treatment. No unconfessed sin is
forgiven. To be forgiven, a sin must be known and lamented, and
confessed in all its details and circumstances to the priest,
who, as a spiritual judge, proportions the amount of the
satisfaction to be rendered by the penitent to the degree of
guilt of the offence, as judged from the facts before him. Thus
the debt has to be painfully and punctiliously worked off, sin by
sin, as in the financial world a note may be extinguished by
successive payments, dollar by dollar. Everything, therefore, is
made to depend upon the fulness and completeness of the
confession. It becomes a work, on account of which one is
forgiven. The absolution becomes simply the stamp of approval
that is placed upon the confession.

The Lutheran conception is centered upon the person of the
sinner, rather than on his sins. It is the person who is forgiven
his sins. Where the person is forgiven but one sin, all his sins
are forgiven; where the least sin is retained, all sins are
retained, and none forgiven, for "there is no condemnation to
them that are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1). The value of the
confession lies not in the confession itself, but in that,
through this confession, we turn to Christ and the word of His
promise.[6]

In Luther's opinion, there are three species of confession.[7]
One to God, in one's own heart, which is of absolute necessity,
and which the true believer is always making; a second to our
neighb