Note 809 — Chapter XXV

He admitted this belief handed down in the Catholic Schools, though not proclaimed a dogma till much later, in the sermon he preached in 1527 “on the day of the Conception of Mary the Mother of God”: “It is a sweet and pious belief that the infusion of Mary’s soul was effected without original sin; so that in the very infusion of her soul she was also purified from original sin and adorned with God’s gifts, receiving a pure soul infused by God; thus from the first moment she began to live she was free from all sin” (“Werke,” Erl. ed., 15², p. 58). The sermon was taken down in notes and published with Luther’s approval. The same statements concerning the Immaculate Conception still remain in a printed edition published in 1529, but in the later editions which appeared during Luther’s lifetime they disappear. (Cp. N. Paulus, “Lit. Beil. der Köln. Volksztng.,” 1904, No. 41.) In a work of 1521 he says: Mary not only kept God’s commandments perfectly but also “received so much grace that she was quite filled with it, as we believe” (“Rationis Latomianæ confutatio,” “Werke,” Weim. ed., 8. p. 56; “Opp. lat. var.,” 7, p. 416). As Luther’s intellectual and ethical development progressed we cannot naturally expect the sublime picture of the pure Mother of God, the type of virginity, of the spirit of sacrifice and of sanctity to furnish any great attraction for him, and as a matter of fact such statements as the above are no longer met with in his later works.