who has been struck be silent and do not repent, and be
unwilling to confess his wound to his brother and instructor,
the instructor, who has a tongue wherewith to cure him, will
not readily be able to profit him. For if the sick man be
ashamed to confess to the physician, the medicine is not
adapted to that of which he is ignorant." Let the princes and
cities, therefore, believe these authors rather than a single
gloss upon a decree questioned and rejected by those who are
skilled in divine law. Wherefore, since a full confession
is, not to say, necessary for salvation, but becomes the
nerve of Christian discipline and the entire obedience, they
must be admonished to conform to the orthodox Church. For,
according to the testimony of Jerome, this was the heresy of
the Montanist, who were condemned over twelve hundred years
ago because they were ashamed to confess their sins. It is
not becoming, therefore, to adopt the error of the wicked
Montanus, but rather the rite of the holy fathers and the
entire Church - viz. that each one teach, according to the
norm of the orthodox faith, that confession, the chief
treasure in the Church, be made in conformity to the rite
kept among them also in the Church.


V. Of the Distinction of Meats.

What they afterwards assert concerning the distinction of
meats and like traditions, of which they seem to make no
account, must be rejected. For we know from the apostle that
all power is of God, and especially that ecclesiastical power
has been given by God for edification: for this reason, from