Ninety-Five Theses or, disputation on the power of indulgences. Illustrated

Martin Luther, Henry Wace

• Publisher: Strelbytskyy Multimedia Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780880009959
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Denominations

Luther's 95 Theses (or Dr. Martin Luther's Debate to Clarify the Value of Indulgences) was a kind of manifesto that criticized Catholic theology. In his Theses, Luther argued that the prevailing religious doctrine of the day destroyed faith.The hammering of this 1517 document to the door of the Wittenberg church marks the start of the Reformation and the history of Protestantism.Due to the conflicts surrounding the ideas presented in his Theses, a wave of religious wars broke out in Western Europe.

DISPUTATION OF DR. MARTIN LUTHER CONCERNING PENITENCE AND INDULGENCES.

IN THE DESIRE and with the purpose of elucidating the truth, a disputation will be held on the underwritten propositions at Wittemberg, under the presidency of the Reverend Father Martin Luther, Monk of the Order of St. Augustine, Master of Arts and of Sacred Theology, and ordinary Reader of the same in that place. He therefore asks those who cannot be present and discuss the subject with us orally, to do so by letter in their absence. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ in saying: “Repent ye,” etc., intended that the whole life of believers should be penitence.

2. This word cannot be understood of sacramental penance, that is, of the confession and satisfaction which are performed under the ministry of priests.

3. It does not, however, refer solely to inward penitence; nay such inward penitence is naught, unless it outwardly produces various mortifications of the flesh.

4. The penalty thus continues as long as the hatred of self – that is, true inward penitence – continues; namely, till our entrance into the kingdom of heaven.

5. The Pope has neither the will nor the power to remit any penalties, except those which he has imposed by his own authority, or by that of the canons.

6. The Pope has no power to remit any guilt, except by declaring and warranting it to have been remitted by God; or at most by remitting cases reserved for himself; in which cases, if his power were despised, guilt would certainly remain.

7. God never remits any man’s guilt, without at the same time subjecting him, humbled in all things, to the authority of his representative the priest.

8. The penitential canons are imposed only on the living, and no burden ought to be imposed on the dying, according to them.

9. Hence the Holy Spirit acting in the Pope does well for us, in that, in his decrees, he always makes exception of the article of death and of necessity.

10. Those priests act wrongly and unlearnedly, who, in the case of the dying, reserve the canonical penances for purgatory.

11. Those tares about changing of the canonical penalty into the penalty of purgatory seem surely to have been sown while the bishops were asleep.

12. Formerly the canonical penalties were imposed not after, but before absolution, as tests of true contrition.

13. The dying pay all penalties by death, and are already dead to the canon laws, and are by right relieved from them.

14. The imperfect soundness or charity of a dying person necessarily brings with it great fear, and the less it is, the greater the fear it brings.

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