e 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.

The treatment of "Reserved Cases," with which this tract ends,
shows the moderation and caution with which Luther is moving,
but, at the same time, how the new wine is working in the old
bottles, which soon must break. The principle of "the
reservation of cases" he discusses in his Address to the German
Nobility.[11] It is critical also in Augsburg Confession, Article
XXVIII, 2, 41; Apology of the Augsburg Confession, English
Translation, pp. 181, 212. The Roman Catholic dogma is officially
presented in the Decrees of Trent, Session XIV, Chapter 7,[12]
viz., "that certain more atrocious and more heinous crimes be
absolved not by all priests, but only by the highest priests."
Thus the power is centralized in the pope, and is delegated for
exercise in ordinary cases to each particular parish-priest
within the limits by which he is circumscribed, but no
farther.[13] The contrast is between delegated and reserved
rights. The Protestant principle is that all the power of the
Church is in the Word of God which it administers; that wherever
all the Word is, there also is all the power of the Church; and
hence that, according to divine tight, all pastors have equal
authority. For this reason, Luther here declares that in regard
to secret sins, i. e., those known only to God and the penitent,
no reservation whatever is to be admitted. But there is still a
distinction which he is ready to concede. It has to do with
public offences where scandal has been given. As "the more
flagr