so in the Latin schools, where probably
Luther, too, learned them. In the _Instruction for Visitors,_
Melanchthon still mentions "der Kinder Handbuechlein, darin das
Alphabet, Vaterunser, Glaub' und andere Gebet' innen stehen--Manual for
Children, containing the alphabet, the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and
other prayers," as the first schoolbook. (W. 26, 237.) After the
invention of printing, chart-impressions with pictures illustrating the
Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments came into the
possession also of some laymen. The poorer classes, however, had to
content themselves with the charts in the churches, which especially
Nicolaus of Cusa endeavored to introduce everywhere. (Herzog's
_Realenzyklopaedie_ 10, 138.) They were followed by confessional
booklets, prayer-booklets, and also by voluminous books of devotion.
Apart from other trash, these contained confessional and communion
prayers instructions on Repentance, Confession, and the Sacrament of
the Altar; above all, however, a mirror of sins, intended as a guide for
self-examination, on the basis of various lists of sins and catalogs of
virtues, which supplanting the Decalog were to be memorized.
Self-evidently, all this was not intended as a schoolmaster to bring
them to Christ and to faith in the free grace of God, but merely to
serve the interest of the Romish penances, satisfactions, and
work-righteousness. Says Luther in the Smalcald Articles: "Here, too,
there was no faith nor Christ, and the virtue of the absolution was not
declared to him, but upon his enumeration of sins and his self-abasement
depended his consolation. What torture, rascality, and idolatry such
confession has produced is more than can be related." (485, 20.) The
chief parts of Christian doctrine but little taught and nowhere
correctly taught,--such was the chief hurt of the Church under the
Papacy.

In the course of time, however, even this deficient and false
instruction gradually fell into decay. The influence of the Latin
schools was not very far-reaching, their number being very small in
proportion to the young. Public schools for the people did not exist in
the Middle Ages. As a matter of fact not a single synod concerned itself
specifically with the instruction of the young. (_H. R._ 10, 137.) At
home, parents and sponsors became increasingly indifferent and
incompetent for teaching. True, the reformers of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries did attempt to elevate