warn against the attempt to make an
exhaustive enumeration of sins. He advises that the confession be
made in the most general terms, covering sins both known and
unknown. "If one would confess all mortal sins, it may be done in
the following words; 'Yea, my whole life, and all that I do, act,
speak, and think, is such as to be deadly and condemnable.' For
if one regard himself as being without mortal sin, this is of all
mortal sins the most mortal." [2] According to this maturer view,
the purpose of the most searching self-examination is to exhibit
the utter impossibility of ever fathoming the depth of corruption
that lies beneath the surface. The reader of the _Tessaradecas_
will recall Luther's statement there, that it is of God's great
mercy that man is able to see but a very small portion of the sin
within him, for were he to see it in its full extent, he would
perish at the sight. The physician need not count every pustule
on the body to diagnose the disease as small-pox. A glance is
enough to determine the case. The sins that are discovered are
the symptoms of the one radical sin that lies beneath them
all.[3] The cry is no longer "_Mea peccata, mea peccata,_" as
though these recognized sins were the exception to a life
otherwise without a flaw, but rather, overwhelmed with confusion,
the penitent finds in himself nothing but sin, except for what he
has by God's grace alone. Most clearly does Luther enforce this
in his exposition of the Fifty-first Psalm, of 1531, a treatise
we most earnestly commend to those who desire fuller information
concerning Luther's doctrine of sin, and his conception of the
value of confession and absolution. He shows that it is not by
committing a particular sin that we become sinners, but that the
sin is committed because our nature is still sinful, and that the
poisonous tree has grown from roots deeply imbedded in the soil.
We are sinners not because particular acts of sin have been
devised and carried to completion, but before the acts are
committed we are sinners; otherwise such fruits would not have
been borne. A bad tree can grow from nothing but a bad root.[4]

In his _Sermon on Confession and the Sacrament_ of 1524, he
discourages habits of morbid self-introspection, and exposes the
perplexities produced by the extractions of the confessional in
constantly sinking the probe deeper and deeper into the heart of
the already crushed and quivering penitent. He shows how one need