Here the contradiction in words is positive and unqualified.

But we must recollect that the term mass here, as will be fully proved hereafter, does not signify the Papal mass in full.

It is a well-known fact, and the Confession itself informs us, that the confessors had long before rejected _private and closet masses_, and also had rejected the idea of the public mass being a _sacrifice_, or offering of Christ, for the sins of the living or the dead.

But that the word mass cannot be regarded as merely synonymous with Lord's Supper, or communion, in this passage, as it frequently is elsewhere, is clear from the context.

For we are told that by proper and diligent instruction "in the design and proper mode of receiving the holy sacrament," "the people are attracted to the _communion and to the mass_," (zur communion _und_ mess gezogen wird;) clearly proving that by mass they here meant something else than communion, namely, the public mass, divested of its _sacrificial_ nature, and of its design to benefit any others than the communicants themselves; in short, regarding it, thus modified, as an admissible _preparation_ for the holy communion.