# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Juni 1862_S183
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

On Confession-Addresses.    183

confession-addresses, and note where they are to be found, as well as whether the passage in question treats the subject only briefly, or fully, or even more extensively; thereupon one should order these slips and, above all, copy the shorter maxims into a special notebook, leaving room in it for later additions — partly for the most important longer passages, partly for such as one happens to find in other writings. — For those who take the trouble to make such preparatory work, no special proof of its manifold usefulness is needed; it grants them a correct insight into the purpose of all confession-addresses as well as into the manner of achieving it; it puts them in a position to sum up now the most necessary points about confession, absolution, and the Supper summarily, now to treat one point or another more extensively while handling the rest more briefly; through repeated, attentive reading through and use of this preparatory work they will increasingly live themselves into it and make it their own, and their growing knowledge and experience will in turn teach them to use it ever more faithfully, so that the good leaven of Dr. Luther's sound doctrine and manner of teaching will penetrate ever more deeply into their confession-addresses as well.

If beginners in the service of the churches have worked out a few confession-addresses after this model, they may, when they are once unable for lack of time to work out a new one, all the more confidently hold one or another of these repeatedly — just as elsewhere, too, one and the same form of confessional admonition used to be read out every time in many places. Only let each one beware of giving room to the frivolous notion that not much depends on confession-addresses, and that one may freely extemporize on the spot. It is something else entirely when practiced and experienced preachers, after mature meditation, deliver them only from a written draft, or even without one.

As regards the choice of texts, it would already be advisable for this reason to draw them from the Gospel for the next Sunday or festival, because this agrees with the correct view held, in the best period of the Lutheran church, of the confessional service — namely, that it was a preparation for the next chief service. This also grants the preacher a welcome ease in meditating on the confession-address, and the hearers a welcome foretaste of the sermon.

A rich collection of other texts for confession-addresses is found in the Pastorale Lutheri by Porta, chap. 14, § 5; these are the sayings which the pastor at Coburg used, during Dr. Luther's stay there in the year 1530, as often as the man of God came to him for private confession — which happened at least every fourteen days. Younger preachers would do well to keep this collection of sayings at hand for use in addresses to those making private confession; indeed, it is generally advisable, with particular regard to what these persons in particular confess, to draw the specific application from the text or content of the confession-address.