self-examination, acknowledgment, confession of sins, penitence and
renewal of life, and warn those who do not do these things with the words
that otherwise the devil will enter into them as he did into Judas, fill
them with all iniquity, and destroy both body and soul. Germans, Swedes
and Danes, who are also in the doctrine of faith alone, teach the same in
the exhortation to the Holy Communion, also warning that otherwise the
communicants will make themselves liable to infernal punishments and
eternal damnation for mixing sacred and profane together. These words are
read out by the priest in a deep voice to all who are about to observe
the Holy Supper, and are listened to by them in full acknowledgment that
they are true.

[2] Nevertheless, after hearing a sermon on the same day about faith
alone and to the effect that the law does not condemn them because the
Lord has fulfilled it for them, and that of themselves they cannot do any
good which is not self-righteous and thus that one's works have nothing
saving in them, only faith alone has, these same persons return home
completely forgetting their earlier confession and rejecting it so far as
they think along the lines of the sermon. But which is true, the latter
or the former? Contrary to each other, both cannot be true. Which is?
That there can be no forgiveness of sins, thus no salvation but only
eternal damnation, apart from self-examination, the knowledge and
acknowledgment, confession and breaking off of sins, that is, apart from
repentance? Or that such things effect nothing towards salvation inasmuch
as full satisfaction for all the sins of men has been made by the Lord
through the passion of the cross for those who have faith, and that those
in faith alone with trust that it is so and with confidence in the
imputation of the Lord's merit, are sinless and appear before God like
men with shining faces for having washed?