s own sinful
self, from which must proceed good works and mortification of the sinful
flesh. The pope could only remit his sin to the penitent so far as to
declare that God had forgiven it.

Thus then the theses expressly declare that God forgives no man his sin
without making him submit himself in humility to the priest who
represents him, and that he recognizes the punishments enjoined by the
Church in her outward sacrament of penance. But Luther's leading
principles are consistently opposed to the customary announcements of
indulgences by the Church. The pope, he holds, can only grant
indulgences for what the pope and the law of the Church have imposed;
nay, the pope himself means absolution from these obligations only, when
he promises absolution from all punishment. And it is only the living
against whom those punishments are directed which the Church's
discipline of penance enjoins; nothing, according to her own laws, can
be imposed upon those in another world.

Further on Luther declares: "When true repentance is awakened in a man,
full absolution from punishment and sin comes to him without any letters
of indulgence." At the same time he says that such a man would willingly
undergo self-imposed chastisement, nay, he would even seek and love it.

Still, it is not the indulgences themselves, if understood in the right
sense, that he wishes to be attacked, but the loose babble of those who
sold them. Blessed, he says, be he who protests against this, but cursed
be he who speaks against the truth of apostolic indulgences. He finds it
difficult, however, to praise these to the people, and at the same time
to teach them the true repentance of the heart. He would have them even
taught that a Christian would do better by giving money to the poor than
by spending it in buying indulgences, and that he who allows a poor man
near him to starve draws down on himself, not indulgences, but the wrath
of God. In sharp and scornful language he denounces the iniquitous
trader in indulgences, and gives the Pope credit for the same abhorrence
for the traffic that he felt himself. Christians must be told, he says,
that, if the Pope only knew of it, he would rather see St. Peter's
Church in ashes than have it built with the flesh and bones of his
sheep.

Agreeably with what the preceding theses had said about the true
penitent's earnestness and willingness to suffer, and the temptation
offered to a mere carnal sense of security, L