To the Supreme Pontiff, Clement VII:
Obedience to the commands of your Holiness is always due but now it is for me a delight since I was wanting to refute the poisonous Lutheran views on faith and works. Fearing these were infecting even the hearts of the faithful, I had shortly before receiving your Holiness' command felt called to write this treatise. This is consequently an agreeable act of obedience which I hope proves fruitful for Christ's faithful and pleasing to your Holiness, whose office it is also to judge this short work.
1. The Lutheran Doctrine of Faith
The Lutherans exalt the evangelical doctrine of man's eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, our human Mediator between God and man. They teach that men attain the forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ, but they enlarge the term "faith" so as to include that conviction by which the sinner approaching the sacrament believes he is justified by the divine mercy through the intercession of Jesus Christ. They assign such great value to this conviction that they say it attains the forgiveness of sins through the divine promise. They affirm that unless one has this firm conviction about the Word of God, one is despising the divine Word by not believing the divine promise. But if in receiving the sacrament one firmly believes he is justified, then he is truly justified. Otherwise the divine promise would not be true and effective.
Some Lutherans so extol this kind of faith that they teach it attains the forgiveness of sins before the sinner has charity. They base this on extended texts of the apostle Paul which distinguish justifying faith from the law. Charity, they hold, is included under the law, since the first and greatest commandment of the law is to love God with one's whole heart, and so on, as our Lord said in the gospel, in Matthew 22[:37).These views make up the heart of Lutheran teaching concerning faith.
2. A First Error: Equivocal Use of the Term Faith
"Faith" means one thing when Holy Scripture refers to that which justifies men, and par-means something else when it refers to that conviction by which one believes he is justified by Christ and the sacraments. Justifying faith is that which Hebrews 11 [:I] defines: Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the conviction of things not seen." Taken in this sense, faith is one of the three theological virtues referred to by Paul, "Now faith, hope, and charity remain" I1 Cor. 13:131. Taken in this sense faith is the gift of God, as written in Ephesians 2 [:81, by which we are saved and without which it is impossible to please God. By such faith we believe all the articles of faith and whatever is to be believed as necessary to salvation.
But faith, taken as a conviction by which a person believes he is justified as he here and now receives this sacrament by the merit of Christ, is much different from faith taken in the first way. As a first indication of this, consider what is believed. Now faith cannot hold to something false, but this conviction can be deceived, since it concerns a particular effect here and now. This conviction arises in part from the faith that is necessary for salvation and in part from human conjecture. Concerning the merit of Christ and the sacraments, it is faith that calls for such a conviction; but concerning the effect here and now in one's own case, it is human conjecture that gives rise to the conviction.
It is a matter of Christian faith that anyone trusting in the merit of Christ and inwardly and outwardly receiving the sacrament correctly is justified by divine grace. But Christian faith does not extend to the belief that I am at this moment inwardly and outwardly receiving the sacrament correctly. Similarly I am held by Christian faith to believe that the true body of Christ is in a correctly consecrated host, but Christian faith does not extend to the belief that the host consecrated at this moment by this particular celebrant on this altar is the body of Christ, since this latter can for various reasons be false. A second consideration is that all Christians share in one and the same faith, according to Ephesians 4 [:51, "One Lord, one faith." Obviously, my own faith does not entail believing that this man who is receiving the sacrament is here and now justified or that the body of Christ is in a particular host. Consequently no one's "faith" entails believing this particular effect of this sacrament in the case of this individual. Therefore, the unity of faith brings to light the second difference between faith and the conviction described. Hence the first error of the Lutherans in this matter is that they attribute to this conviction what Holy Scripture attributes to faith. When they teach this conviction they constantly cite texts of Holy Scripture on faith, such as, "As justified by faith, we have peace with God" [Rom. 5:1], and "by faith purifying their hearts" [Acts 1591 and countless texts like these.