the truth. And all pious hearts who were captive under the Pope, even as
I, will bear me out that they would fain have known one of these things,
yet were not able nor permitted to know it. We knew no better than that
the priests and monks alone were everything; on their works we based our
hope of salvation and not on Christ. Thanks to God, however, it has now
come to pass that man and woman, young and old, know the Catechism, and
how to believe, live, pray, suffer, and die; and that is indeed a
splendid instruction for consciences, teaching them how to be a
Christian and to know Christ." (W. 30, 3, 317.)

Thus Luther extols it as the great achievement of his day that now every
one knew the Catechism, whereas formerly Christian doctrine was unknown
or at least not understood aright. And this achievement is preeminently
a service which Luther rendered. He revived once more the ancient
catechetical parts of doctrine, placed them in the proper Biblical
light, permeated them with the Evangelical spirit, and explained them in
conformity with the understanding of the Gospel which he had gained
anew, stressing especially the _finis historiae_ (the divine purpose of
the historical facts of Christianity, as recorded in the Second
Article), the forgiveness of sins not by works of our own, but by grace,
for Christ's sake.

86. Catechetical Instruction before Luther.

In the Middle Ages the Lord's Prayer and the Creed were called the chief
parts for sponsors (_Patenhauptstuecke_), since the canons required
sponsors to know them, and at Baptism they were obligated to teach these
parts to their godchildren. The children, then, were to learn the Creed
and the Lord's Prayer from their parents and sponsors. Since the
Carolingian Epoch these regulations of the Church were often repeated,
as, for example, in the _Exhortation to the Christian Laity_ of the
ninth century. From the same century dates the regulation that an
explanation of the Creed and the Lord's Prayer should be found in every
parish, self-evidently to facilitate preaching and the examination in
confession. In confession, which, according to the Lateran Council,
1215, everybody was required to make at least once a year, the priests
were to inquire also regarding this instruction and have the chief parts
recited. Since the middle of the thirteenth century the Creed, the
Lord's Prayer, together with the Benedicite, Gratias, Ave Maria, Psalms,
and other matter, were taught al