In the passage of his “Deudsche Messe” where he speaks of his idea on the teaching of the Catechism, Luther says, that he knew no better way to give such instruction than “that in which it had been given from the earliest days of Christianity and until now, viz. under the three heads: The Ten Commandments, the Creed and the Our Father”; these three things contained all that was called for.[1922] Hence he himself was far from sharing the opinion of certain later Protestants, viz. that, in the selection and methodical treatment of these three points he had struck out an entirely new line. He simply adapted the existing form of instruction to his new doctrines, which he cast into a shape suitable for popular consumption.
The Decalogue, together with Confession with which it naturally goes hand in hand, had assumed, ever since the 13th century, an ever-growing importance in the instructions intended for the people. In esteeming, as he did, the Ten Commandments, the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, Luther was simply following in the footsteps of the 14th and 15th century. Johann Wolff, the Frankfurt preacher, who is described on his tombstone as “Doctor decem præceptorum,” as his Handbook for Confession of 1478 shows, was quite indefatigable in his propaganda on behalf of the use of the Decalogue in confession and in popular instructions.[1923]
We must here call attention, above all, to the instruction habitually given in the home by parents and god-parents before Luther’s day; this “consisted chiefly in teaching the Creed and the Our Father, two points belonging to the oldest catechetical formularies of the ancient Church.”[1924] Luther himself had learnt these in the Latin school with the rest contained in the hornbooks, and on them in turn he based his own Catechism.[1925]
Melanchthon speaks, in 1528, of the “Children’s manual containing the Alphabet, the Our Father, the Creed and other prayers,”[1926] as the first school primer which had come down from the past.
Even Mathesius admits that, “parents and schoolmasters taught their children the Ten Commandments, the Creed and the Our Father, as I in my childhood learnt them at school and often repeated them with the other children, as was the custom in the olden schools”; he adds, however, that the “tiresome devil” had smuggled additions into the Catholic “A.B.C. book” and corrupted it with Popish doctrine, whereby servitors are “turned” towards the Mass; the devil “had also introduced into the school primer the idolatrous ‘Salve Regina’ which detracted from the honour due to Jesus Christ, our one Mediator and Intercessor.”[1927]
In the 15th and 16th century priests were often urged to recite from the pulpit every Sunday the Creed and Our Father, sometimes also the Hail Mary, and the Decalogue was not unfrequently added.[1928] A work by the Basle parish-priest, Johann Surgant, which appeared in 1502 and was many times republished, deals exclusively with the expounding of the above points to the people, supplies each with explanatory notes, and requires, in accordance with the existing rules, that the priests should carefully instruct the people in them (“diligenter informent”). It was an old custom to preach on the Catechism during Lent as Luther also had done in his younger days, taking for his subject the Ten Commandments and the Our Father; this custom, too, had probably been handed down from the time, when, during the weeks preceding the great day for baptism, viz. Holy Saturday, the catechumens were instructed in the Creed and the Our Father (“traditio symboli et orationis dominicæ”).
The courses of sermons preached four times a year at Wittenberg also had their analogy in the Church’s past. As early as 1281, a synod meeting in London under Archbishop Peckham of Canterbury had required, in the 10th Canon, that the parish-priest should rehearse every three months the principal doctrines of the Christian faith and morals simply and concisely.
Even in his Confession or examination before Communion of 1523[1929] Luther had merely revived, under another form, an institution of the Mediæval Church, for, in the Confession before Communion, it had been customary to recite the principal articles of Christian faith.[1930]