acts as the devil wills. He has no power to run to one or the other of the two riders and offer himself to him, but the riders fight to obtain possession of the animal.”[788]
With frightful boldness he declares this view to be the very core and basis of religion. Without this doctrine of the enslaved will, the supernatural character of Christianity cannot, so he says, be maintained; the work of redemption falls to the ground, because whoever sets up free-will cheats Christ of all His merit;[789] whoever advocates free-will brings death and Satan into the soul.[790]
In such passages we hear the real Luther, with all his presumptuous belief in himself: “To me the defence of this truth is a matter of supreme and eternal importance. I am convinced that life itself should be set at stake in order to preserve it. It must stand though the whole world be involved thereby in strife and tumult, nay, even fall into ruins and dissolve into nothing.”[791]
He ventures again to assert of Erasmus, that it had not been given him from above to feel, as he himself does, how in this great question “faith, conscience, salvation, the Word of God, the glory of Christ and even God Himself are involved.”[792] Concerning himself, on the other hand, he assures the reader that, with no earthly motives, he is waging a great war “with a God-given courage and steadfastness which his foes call obstinacy; that he holds fast to his cause in spite of so many dangers to his life, so much hatred, so many persecutions, in short, exposed as he is to the fury of man and of all the devils.”[793]
In various passages a lurid light is thrown on his inner state. In language which recalls the pseudo-mysticism of his Commentary on Romans ten years earlier, he says, that the predestination to hell which he advocated was certainly terrifying, that he himself had frequently taken great offence at it and had been brought to the abyss of despair, so that he wished he had never been born; but then “he saw how wholesome was this despair and how near to grace.”[794] “For whoever is convinced that all things depend on God’s Will, in his despair of self avoids making any choice and simply waits for God to act; such a one is near to grace and to finding salvation.” He himself “attributes nothing to himself, hopes for nothing and desires nothing” for his salvation; in thus waiting on the action of God’s grace he is very nigh to salvation, though he is as it were dead, stifled by the consciousness of guilt, and spiritually buried in hell; “whoever has read our works will be familiar with all this.”[795]
The echo of the pseudo-mystical ideas in which he had formerly steeped himself is plainly discernible in these words which go to form one of the most remarkable of the pictures he has left us of his state.
Even the “self-righteous,” whom he had at one time so bitterly assailed, again rise from their graves. The admission of free-will, he tells them, destroys all inward peace. After every work performed, the question still rankles: “Is it pleasing to God, or does God require something more? This is attested by the experience of all self-righteous (iustitiarii), and I myself, to my cost, was familiar with it for many long years.”[796]
On the same page he gives us a glimpse of the psychological source whence his whole theory of the enslaved will springs. The doctrine was born of personal motives and fashioned to suit his own state of soul. None the less, he insists that it must also become the common property of all the faithful which none can do without, nay, the very basis of the new Christianity. “Without this doctrine I should believe it necessary to plague myself with uncertainty and to beat the air with hopeless efforts, even were there no perils for the soul, no tribulations and no devils. Though I should live and work for all eternity, my conscience would never attain to a real peace and be able to say to itself, you have done enough for God.” He goes so far as to say: “For myself I admit, that, were free-will offered me, I should not care to have it; I should not wish to see anything placed within my power by means of which I might work for my salvation, because I should never be able to withstand and endure the trials and dangers of life and the assaults of so many devils.”[797]
The last words of the book even exceed the rest in confidence, and the audacity of his demand that his work should be accepted without question almost takes away one’s breath: “In this book I have not merely theorised; I have set up definite propositions, and these I shall defend; no one will I permit to pass judgment on them, and I advise all to submit to them. May the Lord Whose cause is here vindicated,” he says, addressing himself to Erasmus, “give you light to make of you a vessel to His honour and glory. Amen.”[798]
The great importance of the work “De servo arbitrio” for a knowledge of the religious psychology of its author may warrant a description of some of its other psychological aspects, and first of the connection discernible between the denial of free-will and Luther’s so-called inward experiences, which were supposed to be behind his whole enterprise.
He always believed he was following the irresistible pull of grace, and that he was merely treading the path appointed to him from above. In this work he breaks out into a loud hymn in praise of the irresistibility of the Divine action. “All that I have done,” he exclaims, “was not the result of my own will; this God knows, and the world, too, should have known it long ago. Hence, what I am and by what spirit and council I was drawn into the controversy is God’s business.”[799] In this explanation, so typical of his character and way of thinking, is summed up his reply to that argument of Erasmus against his doctrine, particularly of free-will, where the latter had confronted him with the teaching of the whole of the Church’s past.
For more than ten years, Luther adds, he had to listen to the reproach of his conscience: How dare you venture to overthrow the ancient teaching of all men and of the Church, which has been confirmed by saints, martyrs and miracles? “I do not think anyone has ever had to fight with this objection as I had. Even to me it seemed incredible that this impregnable stronghold which had so long withstood the storms, should fall. I adjure God, and swear by my very soul, that, had I not been driven, had I not been forced by my own insight and the evidence of things, my resistance would not have ceased even to this day.” But, under the higher impulse, he had suffered authorities ancient and modern to pass like a flood over his head that God’s grace might alone be exalted. “Since this is my only object, the spirit of the olden saints and martyrs and their wonder-working power witness in my favour.” The utter rigidity of his doctrine and line of thought, and the connection between his present attack on freedom and his own ostensible unfreedom in God’s hands could hardly be placed in a clearer light than here in Luther’s reply to the argument of Erasmus.
In another passage he describes, perhaps unconsciously, his experiences with his own will, so inclined to contradiction and anger; he says: That the will is not free is evident from the fact that, “it becomes the more provoked the greater the opposition it encounters. … [800] Whoever pursues an object passionately is not open to correction, as experience shows. If he gives way, this is not willingly, but under pressure, and because it serves his purpose. It is only the man who has no interest whatever who allows things to take their own course.”[801]
From time to time the several pet ideas which had played a part in his previous development are harnessed to his argument and made to prove the servitude of the will.
We are conscious, he says, that, pressed down to the earth by concupiscence, we do not act as we should; hence man is not free to do what is good. The “sting” of this inability remains, as experience teaches, in spite of all theological distinctions. Natural reason, which groans so loudly under it and seeks to resist God’s action, would prove it even were it not taught in Holy Scripture. But Paul, throughout the whole of his Epistle to the Romans, while vindicating grace, teaches that we are incapable of anything, even when we fancy we are doing what is good.[802]
And further, the desire of gaining merit for heaven—the supposed error which he opposed quite early in his career owing to his distaste for works generally—can only be finally vanquished when the idol of free-will is overthrown. Then, too, he says, the fear of undeserved damnation by God also vanishes; for if there be no merit for heaven, then neither can there be any for hell; accordingly we may say without hesitation what must otherwise be repellent to every mind, viz. that God condemns to hell although man has not deserved it (“immeritos damnat”);[803] this is the highest degree