rified, is humbled, desponds,
despairs, and anxiously desires aid, but sees no escape; he
begins to be an enemy of [enraged at] God, and to murmur, etc.
This is what Paul says, Rom. 4, 15: The Law worketh wrath. And
Rom. 5, 20: Sin is increased by the Law. [The Law entered that
the offense might abound.]

III. Of Repentance.

This office [of the Law] the New Testament retains and urges,
as St. Paul, Rom. 1, 18 does, saying: The wrath of God is
revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men. Again, 3, 19: All the world is guilty
before God. No man is righteous before Him. And Christ says,
John 16, 8: The Holy Ghost will reprove the world of sin.

This, then, is the thunderbolt of God by which He strikes in a
heap [hurls to the ground] both manifest sinners and false
saints [hypocrites], and suffers no one to be in the right
[declares no one righteous], but drives them all together to
terror and despair. This is the hammer, as Jeremiah says, 23,
29: Is not My Word like a hammer that breaketh the rock in
pieces? This is not activa contritio or manufactured
repentance, but passiva contritio [torture of conscience],
true sorrow of heart, suffering and sensation of death.

This, then, is what it means to begin true repentance; and
here man must hear such a sentence as this: You are all of no
account, whether you be manifest sinners or saints [in your
own opinion]; you all must become different and do otherwise
than you now are and are doing [no matter what sort of people
you are], whether you are as great, wise, powerful, and holy
as you may. Here no one is [righteous, holy], godly, etc.

But to this office the New Testament immediately adds the
consolatory promise of grace through the Gospel, which must be
believed, as Christ declares, Mark 1,15: Repent and believe
the Gospel, i.e., become different and do otherwise, and
believe My promise. And John, preceding Him, is called a
preacher of repentance, however, for the remission of sins,
i.e., John was to accuse all, and convict them of being
sinners, that they might know what they were before God, and
might acknowledge that they were lost men, and might thus be
prepared for the Lord, to receive grace, and to expect and
accept from Him the remission of sins. Thus also Christ
Himself says, Luke 24, 47: Repentance and remission of sins
must be preached in My name among all nations.

But whenever the Law alone, without the Gospel being added