o choose his own
confessor and relieving him of certain satisfactions. See
Introduction, p. 22.

[12] See above, Thesis 6.

[13] i. e., "Papal."

[14] Cf. Thesis 32.

[15] The commissioner who sold the letters of indulgence.

[16] The best texts read _illi_, "on it," i. e., the Word of God.
The _Erl. Ed._ has a variant _verbis evangelics_, "the words of the
Gospel" (_op. var. arg._, I, 289).

[17] See Introduction, p. 20, note 2.

[18] i. e., Threatens with "thunder-bolt" of excommunication.

[19] See Letter to Mainz, above p. 26. For repetition and defense
of the statement against which Luther here protests, see _Disp.
I. Jo Tetzelii_, Th. 99-101; Loescher. I, 513.

[20] Cf. Thesis 6.

[21] Cf. Thesis 5 and note.

[22] Cf. Theses 36, 37.

[23] The letter of indulgence entitled its possessor to
absolution "once in life and in the article of death."

[24] During the time when the Jubilee-indulgences were preached,
other Indulgences were suspended.

[25] In a letter to Michael Dressel, 22 June, 1516, Luther had
written: "It is not that man, therefore whom no one disturbs who
has peace--which is indeed, the peace of the world--but he whom
all men and all things harass and who bears all quietly with joy.
You say with Israel: 'Peace, peace,' and there is no peace; say
rather with Christ, 'Cross, cross' and there is no cross. For the
cross ceases to be a cross as soon as you say joyfully: 'Blessed
cross, there is no tree like you'" (Preserved Smith, _Luther_, p.
32).

III

LETTER TO JOHN STAUPITZ ACCOMPANYING THE "RESOLUTIONS" TO THE XCV
THESES

1518

To his Reverend and Dear Father

JOHN STAUPITZ,

Professor of Sacred Theology, Vicar of the Augustinian Order,

Brother Martin Luther,

his pupil,

sendeth greeting.

I remember, dear Father, that once, among those pleasant and
wholesome talks of thine, with which the Lord Jesus ofttimes
gives me wondrous consolation, the word _poenitentia_[1] was
mentioned. We were moved with pity for many consciences, and for
those tormentors who teach, with rules innumerable and
unbearable, what they call a _modus confitendi_.[2] Then we heard
thee say as with a voice from heaven, that there is no true
penitence which does not begin with love of righteousness and of
God, and that this love, which others think to be the end and the
completion of penitence, is rather its beginning.

This word of thine stuck in me like a sharp arrow of the mighty,
[Ps.