form entitled, "How the
Unlearned Should be Taught to Confess." It is identical with the one
found in the Book of Concord of 1580, save only that the original
contained the words, "What is Confession? Answer," which are omitted in
the German Concordia. Luther placed the part Of Confession between
Baptism and the Lord's Supper, thereby actually making this the fifth
and the Lord's Supper the sixth chief part. And when later on (for in
Luther's editions the chief parts are not numbered) the figures were
added, Confession could but receive the number 5, and the Lord's Supper,
6. Thus, then, the sequence of the six parts, as found in the Book of
Concord, was, in a way, chosen by Luther himself.

113. Office of the Keys and Christian Questions.

The three questions on the Office of the Keys in the fifth chief part
form the most important and independent addition to Luther's Small
Catechism. However, they are not only in complete agreement with
Luther's doctrine of Absolution, but, in substance, also contained in
what he himself offered in the part Of Confession. For what Luther says
in paragraphs 26 to 28 in a liturgical form is expressed and explained
in the three questions on the Office of the Keys in a doctrinal and
catechetical form. Not being formulated by Luther, however, they were
not received into the Book of Concord. In the Nuernberg _Text-Booklet_
of 1531 they are placed before Baptism. Thence they were taken over into
the Nuernberg _Children's Sermons_ of 1533 as a substitute for Luther's
form of Confession. Andrew Osiander, in the draft of his Church Order of
1531, in the article on "Catechism and the Instruction of Children,"
added as sixth to the five chief parts: "Of the Keys of the Church, or
the Power to Bind and to Unbind from Sins," quoting as Bible-verse the
passage: "The Lord Jesus breathed on His disciples," etc. Brenz, though
not, as frequently assumed, the author of the Nuernberg Catechism, also
contributed toward introducing and popularizing this part of the
Catechism. In his Questions of 1535 and 1536, which appeared in the
Appendix to the Latin translation of Luther's Large Catechism, he
offered an original treatment to the Keys of Heaven, as the sixth chief
part, on the basis of Matt. 16, 19; Luke 19, 16; John 20, 22f.
Thirty-six years after the first publication of Luther's Catechisms,
Mathesius, in his _Sermons on the Life of Luther,_ also speaks of six
chief parts of catechetical instruction;