PART III. LUTHER CONFUTES ERASMUS'

PART III. LUTHER CONFUTES ERASMUS'

IN SUPPORT OF FREEWILL.

SECTION 1. Erasmus' Definition of AND first, as bound in duty, I will begin with your very definition of Freewill; which is as follows:

'Moreover, by Freewill here, I mean that power of the human will, whereby a man is able to apply himself to those things which lead to eternal salvation, or to turn himself away from them.'

Doubtless with great prudence, you lay down a bare a definition here, without opening any part of it as is customary with others: perhaps afraid of more shipwrecks than one! I am therefore compelled to beat out the several parts of it for myself. The thing defined, if it is strictly examined, is certainly of a wider range than the definition. It is therefore what the Sophists would call a defective definition, which is their term for those which do not fill up the thing defined. For I have shown above, that Freewill belongs to none but God only. You might, perhaps with propriety, attribute will to man. But to attribute free will to him in divine things is too much, since the term Freewill, in the judgment of all ears, is properly applied to 'that which can do, and which does,' towards God, whatever it pleases, without being confined by any law or command.

You would not call a slave free, who acts under the command of his master. With how much less propriety do we call a man or an angel free, when they live under the most absolute subjection to God (to say nothing of sin and death), so as not to subsist for a moment by their own strength.

Instantly, therefore, even at the very doors of our argument, we have a quarrel between the definition of the term, and the definition of the thing. The word signifies one thing, and the thing itself is understood to be another. It would be more properly called vertible will, or mutable will. For thus Augustine (and after him, the Sophists) extenuates the glory and virtue of that word Free, adding this disparagement to it: they speak of the vertibility of the free will.' It would become us to speak this way, that we might avoid deceiving the hearts of men by inflated, vain, and pompous words. Augustine also thinks that we should speak in sober and plain words, observing a fixed rule. For in teaching, a dialectic simplicity and strictness of speech is required — not big swelling words, and figures of rhetorical persuasion.

SECT. 2. Definition continued.

But, lest I seem to take pleasure in fighting for a word, I will acquiesce for the moment in this abuse of terms, great and dangerous as it is, so far as to allow a 'free' will to be the same as a 'vertible' will. I will also indulge

Erasmus with making Freewill 'a power of the human will,' as though Angels did not have it — since, in this performance, he professes to treat only human Freewill. Otherwise, in this particular also, the definition would be narrower than the thing defined.

I hasten to those parts of the definition on which the subject hinges.

Some of these are sufficiently manifest; others flee the light, as though a guilty conscience made them afraid of everything. Yet a definition ought to be the plainest and most certain thing in the world; for to define obscurely, is just like not defining at all. These parts are plain: (1) a power of the human will; (2) by which a man is able; (3) unto eternal salvation.

But those other words, 'to apply himself;' and again, 'those things which lead;' and again, 'to turn himself away;' — these are the words of the hoodwinked fencer. What will we then divine that phrase 'to apply himself' to mean? Again, 'to turn himself away'? What are those words,

'which lead to eternal salvation'? What corner are they slinking into? I perceive that I have to deal with a veritable Scotus or Heraclitus; who wears me out with two sorts of labour.

First, I have to go in search of my adversary, and grope for him in the dark amidst pitfalls, with a palpitating heart (it is a daring and dangerous enterprise); and if I do not find him, then I have to fight with hobgoblins, and beat the air in the dark, to no purpose.

Secondly, if I manage to drag him into the light, then at length, once I am worn out with the pursuit, I have to close with him in an equal fight.

By 'a power of the human will,' then, is meant, I suppose, an ability, faculty, disposedness, or suitedness to will, to refuse, to choose, despise, approve, reject, and perform whatever other actions there are of the human will. But I do not see what is meant by this same power 'applying itself' and 'turning itself away,' if it is not this very willing and refusing, this very choosing and despising, this very approving and rejecting — in short, if it is not 'the will performing its very office.' So that we must suppose this power to be 'a something interposed between the will itself and its actings:' a power by which the will itself draws out the operation of willing and refusing, and by which that very act of willing and refusing is elicited. It is not possible to imagine or conceive anything else here. If I am mistaken, let the fault be charged upon the author who defines it, not upon me who is searching out his meaning. For it is rightly said by the jurists, that the words of the one who speaks obscurely, when he might speak more plainly, are to be interpreted against himself. And here, by the way, I could be glad to know nothing of these Moderns with whom

I have to deal, and their subtleties: for we must be content to speak grossly, so that we may teach and understand.

'The things which lead to eternal salvation,' are the words and works of God, I suppose. These are set before the human will, that it may either apply itself to them, or turn away from them. By the words of God, I mean the Law as well as the Gospel: works are demanded by the Law; and faith by the Gospel. For there are no other things that lead either to the grace of God, or to eternal salvation, save the word and work of God — since grace, or the Spirit, is the life itself to which we are led by the word

SECT. 3. Definition continued.

But this life, or eternal salvation, is an incomprehensible thing to human conception, as Paul cites from Isaiah (in 1Cor 2.9): "What eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man, are the things which God has prepared for those who love him." For this also is placed among the chief articles of our faith. In confessing them, we say,

'and the life ever-lasting,' And what the power of Freewill is, in receiving this article, Paul declares in 1Cor 2.10: "God," he says, "has revealed them to us by his Spirit." It is as if he had said, 'unless the Spirit had revealed them to us, no man's heart would know or think anything about them;

Freewill is that far from being able to apply itself to them, or to covet them.'

Consult your experience. What have the most excellent wits among the heathens thought of a future life, and of the resurrection?

Has it not been that the more they excelled in genius, the more ridiculous the resurrection and eternal life appeared to them? Unless you would say that those philosophers and other Greeks, those who called Paul a babbler, and an assertor of new Gods when he taught these things at Athens, were not men of genius. In Acts 26.4 Porcius Festus calls Paul a madman for preaching eternal life. What does Pliny bark about these things in his seventh book? What does Lucian say, who was so great a wit? Were these men stupid? No, it is true of most men, even today, that the greater their genius and erudition, the more they laugh at this article, and consider it a fable; and they do that openly. For, as to the secret soul, unless he is sprinkled with the Holy Ghost, no man either positively knows, or believes in, or wishes for eternal salvation, even though he may frequently boast of it with his voice and his pen. I would to God that you and I, my Erasmus, were free from this same leaven, so rare is a believing mind as applied to this article! Have I hit the sense of your definition?

SECT. 4. Inferences from Erasmus' definition.

So then, Freewill, according to Erasmus, is a power of the will, which is able, of itself, to will and not to will the word and work of God. By this word and work, it is led to those things which exceed both its sense and thought.

But if it is able to will and to refuse, it is also able to love and to hate. If it is able to love and to hate, then it is also able, in some small degree, to do the deeds of the Law, and to believe the Gospel. Because, if you will, or if you refuse a certain thing, it is impossible for you not to be able to work something towards it by means of that will, even though you are not able, through another's hindering, to finish it. Now, since death, the cross, and all the evils of the world are numbered among those works of God which lead to salvation, the human will must be able to choose even death and the man's own destruction. Indeed, it is able to will all things while it is able to will the word and work of God. For what can there be anywhere, that is below, above, within, or without, the word and work of God, except

God himself? And what is now left to grace, and the Holy Spirit? This is manifestly to attribute divinity to Freewill — since to will the Law and the Gospel, to reject sin, and to choose death, is the property of divine virtue exclusively, as Paul teaches in more places than one.

Hence it appears that no man since the Pelagians days, has written more correctly on Freewill, than Erasmus has. For I have said before, that Freewill is a term peculiar to God, and it expresses a divine perfection.

However, up to now no man has attributed this divine power to it, except the Pelagians. For the Sophists, whatever they may think, certainly speak very differently about it. No, Erasmus far exceeds the Pelagians: for they attribute this divinity to the whole of the free will, and Erasmus attributes divinity to half of it. They have Freewill consist of two parts; a power of discerning, and a power of choosing. They pretend the one belongs to the understanding, and the other to the will, as the Sophists also do.

But Erasmus, making no mention of the power of discerning, confines his praises to the power of choosing, singly; and so he deifies a sort of crippled and half-begotten Freewill. What would he have done, do you think, if he had been set to describe the whole of this faculty?

Yet, not content with this, he even exceeds the heathen philosophers. For they have not yet determined 'whether any substance can put itself into motion.' And on this point, the Platonics and Peripatetics differ from each other throughout the whole body of their philosophy. But according to Erasmus, Freewill not only moves itself, but it even applies itself, by its own power, to those things which are eternal and incomprehensible to itself. As a perfectly new and unheard-of definer of Freewill, he leaves heathen philosophers, Pelagians, Sophists, and all others, far behind him!

Nor is this enough: he does not spare himself, but even disagrees and fights with himself more than with all the rest. He had said before that 'the human will is altogether inefficacious without grace.' Did he say this in jest? But now, when he defines it seriously, he tells us that the human will possesses that power by which it efficaciously applies itself to those things which belong to eternal salvation — that is, to those things which are incomparably above its power. Thus, in this place, Erasmus is superior even to himself.

SECT. 5. Erasmus' definition.

Do you perceive, my Erasmus (without meaning it, I suppose) how you betray yourself by this definition, to be one who understands nothing at all about these things, or who writes them in sheer thoughtlessness and contempt, without proving what he says, or what he affirms?

As I have remarked before, you say less and claim more for Freewill, than all the rest of its advocates have done, because you do not even describe the whole of Freewill, and yet you assign everything to it. The Sophists (or at least their father, Peter Lombard 291) deliver what is far more tolerable to us when they affirm that Freewill is the faculty of first discerning good from evil, and then choosing good or evil, as grace is either present or lacking. He agrees entirely with Augustine, that Freewill, by its own strength, cannot help but fall, and has no power save to commit sin.' On this account, Augustine says it should be called Bondwill, rather than

Freewill; in his second book against Julian.

But you represent the power of Freewill to be equal on both sides, insofar as it can, by its own strength and without grace, both apply itself to and turn itself away from good. You are not aware how much you attribute to it by this pronoun 'itself,' or 'its own self,' while you say, 'it can apply itself!' In fact, you exclude the Holy Spirit with all his power, as altogether superfluous and unnecessary. Your definition is therefore damnable, even in the judgment of the Sophists. If they were not so maddened against me by the blindings of envy, they would rave at your book rather than mine.

But since you attack Luther, you say nothing but what is holy and catholic, even though you contradict both yourself and them. So great is the patience of the saints.

I do not say this as approving the sentence of the Sophists on Freewill, but as thinking it is more tolerable than that of Erasmus; because they approach nearer to the truth. But neither do they affirm, as I do, that Freewill is a mere nothing. Still, inasmuch as they affirm (the Master of the Sentences in particular) that it has no power of itself without grace, they are at war with Erasmus; indeed, they seem to be at war with themselves also, and to be torturing one another with disputes about a mere word — they are fonder of contention than of truth, as becomes

Sophists. For, suppose a Sophist of no bad sort to come my way, with whom I was holding a familiar conversation and conference on these matters in a corner; and whose candid and free judgment I would ask in some way such as this:

'If anyone were to say to you that something is free, which by its own power can only incline to one side (that is, to the bad side), having power, it is true, on the other side (that is, on the good side), but that other inclination is by a virtue that is not its own — indeed, it is simply by the help of another — could you refrain from laughing, my friend?'

For, upon this principle, I would easily make out that a stone or the trunk of a tree has Freewill. For it can incline both upwards and downwards; but by its own power, indeed, it can only downwards. Yet, by another's help, and by that help only, it can incline upwards also. And thus, as I have said before, by an inverted use of all languages and words, we will at length come to say, 'No man is all men;' 'nothing is everything:' by referring the one term to the thing itself, and the other term to some other thing, which is not part of it, but may possibly be present to it and It is in this way that, after endless disputes, they make the free will to be free by an accident; viz. as being that which may be made free by another.

But the question is about the freedom of the will, as it is in itself, and in its own substance. And if this is the question resolved, there remains nothing but an empty name for Freewill, whether they will or not. The Sophists fail in this also: that they assign to Freewill a power of discerning good from evil. They also lower regeneration, and the renewal of the Holy Ghost, and claim that extrinsic aid as a sort of outward appendage to Freewill. I will say more of this later. But enough of your definition. Let us now see the arguments which are to swell this empty

SECT. 6. Ecclesiasticus 15.15-18 The first is taken from Wisdom 15.15-18 300: "The Lord made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel. He added his commands, and his precepts. If you are willing to keep his commandments, and to perform acceptable faithfulness forever, they shall preserve you. He has set fire and water before you; stretch forth your hand to whichever you will. Before man is life and death, good and evil, whichever he likes shall be given to him."

Although I might justly reject this book, I admit it for the moment, so that I may not lose my time by involving myself in a dispute about the books received into the Hebrew canon (which you ridicule and revile not a little)

— comparing the Proverbs of Solomon and the Love-song (as you entitle it by an ambiguous sort of jeer) with the two books of Esdras, Judith, the history of Susannah and of the Dragon, and Esther. This last, however, they have received into their canon, although in my judgment, it deserves to be excluded more than all the rest. But I would answer briefly in your own words: 'the Scripture is obscure and ambiguous in this passage.' It therefore proves nothing with certainty. And maintaining the negative as we do, I demand that you produce a place which proves by clear words, what Freewill is, and what Freewill can effect. Perhaps you will do this on the Greek calends. However, to avoid this necessity, you waste many good words in marching over the ears of corn, and reciting so many opinions on Freewill, that you almost make Pelagius evangelical.

Again, you invent four kinds of grace so that you may be able to assign some sort of faith and charity even to the heathen philosophers. Again, you invent that threefold law of nature, works, and faith. This is a new figment by which you enable yourself to maintain that the precepts of the heathen philosophers have a mighty coincidence with the precepts of the Gospel. Then again, you apply that affirmation in Psalm 4.6: "The light of your countenance has been marked upon us, Lord." This speaks of the knowledge of the very countenance of God (that is, of an operation of faith) to blinded reason. Now, let any Christian put all these things together, and he will be obliged to suspect that you are sporting and jesting with the dogmas and worship of Christians. For I find it most difficult indeed to attribute all this to ignorance, in a man who has so thoroughly ransacked all our documents, and so diligently treasured them up and remembered them. But I will abstain for the present, content with this short hint till a fitter opportunity offers itself. But let me beg of you, my Erasmus, do not tease us any more in this way, with your

'Who sees me?' Nor is it safe, in so weighty a matter, to continually play at making Vertumnuses of words with everybody.

SECT. 7. Opinions on Freewill stated.

You make three opinions on Freewill out of one. You account it a harsh opinion, which denies that a man can will anything good without special grace — that he can begin anything good, go on with anything good, and complete anything good. But though harsh, you account it highly approvable. It approves itself to you as leaving man in possession of desire and endeavour, but not leaving him anything to ascribe to his own powers. The opinion of those who maintain that Freewill can do nothing but sin, that only grace works good in us, seems still harsher to you. But harshest of all, is that opinion which affirms that Freewill is an empty name: that God works both good and evil in us. It is against these two last opinions, that you profess to write.

SECT. 8. Erasmus inconsistent with his definition.

Do you even know what you are saying, my Erasmus? You make three opinions here, as if they were the opinions of three different sects. You do not perceive that it is the same thing declared in different words, with a twofold variety by us, who are the same persons, and professors of one sect. But let me warn you of your carelessness, or dullness of intellect; and expose it.

I ask then, how does the definition of Freewill which you have given above, correspond with this first opinion of yours; which you declare to be highly approvable?

For you said that Freewill is a power of the human will, by which a man can apply himself to good. But here you say and approve its being said that a man cannot will good, without grace. Your definition affirms what its illustration denies; and there is found 'a yea and nay' in your Freewill.

Thus, at the same time you both approve and condemn us; no, you condemn and approve yourself in one and the same dogma and article.

Do you not think it good, that it applies itself to those things which pertain to everlasting salvation? This is what your definition attributes to Freewill; and yet there is no need of grace if there is so much good in Freewill, that it can apply itself to good. So then, the Freewill which you define is different from the Freewill which you defend; and Erasmus has two Freewills more than others have, and those are quite at variance with each other.

SECT. 9. The approvable opinion considered.

But, dismissing that Freewill which your definition has invented, let us look at this contrary one, which the opinion itself sets before us. You grant that a man cannot will good without special grace. And we are not now discussing what the grace of God can do, but what man can do without grace. You grant, therefore, that Freewill cannot will good. This is nothing else than saying it cannot apply itself to those things which pertain to eternal salvation, as you sang out in your definition. Indeed, you say a little before, that the human will is so depraved that, having lost its liberty, it is compelled to serve sin, and cannot restore itself to any better sort of produce. If I am not mistaken, you represent the Pelagians to have been of this opinion. Now, I think there is no escape here for my

He is caught and held by open words; to wit, that the will, having lost its liberty, is driven into, and held fast in, the service of sin. O exquisite

Freewill which having lost its freedom, is declared by Erasmus himself to be the servant of sin! When Luther said this, 'nothing had ever been heard that is more absurd,' 'nothing could be published that is more mischievous than this paradox.' Diatribes must be written against him!

But perhaps nobody will take my word for it, that Erasmus has really said these things: let this passage of Diatribe be read, and it will excite wonder. I am not greatly surprised. The man who does not consider this a serious subject, and is never affected with the cause that he is pleading, but is altogether alienated from it in heart, and is tired of it, and chills under it, or is nauseated by it — how such a one can one do other than say absurd things here and there, incongruous things, discordant things, pleading the cause as he does. He is like a drunken or sleeping man who belches out 'yes' and 'no,' as the sounds fall variously upon his ears. It is on this account that rhetoricians require feeling in an advocate; and theology much more requires such a degree of emotion in her champion, that it will render him vigilant, sharp-sighted, intent, thoughtful, and strenuous.

SECT. 10. The approvable opinion further considered.

If Freewill without grace, having lost her freedom, is obliged to serve sin, and cannot will good, then I would like to know what that desire is, what that endeavour is, which this first and approvable opinion leaves to a man? It cannot be good desire, it cannot be good endeavour: because he cannot will good — as the opinion says, and as you have conceded.

Therefore, evil desire and evil endeavour alone are left — which, now that liberty is lost, are compelled to serve sin. And what is meant, I ask, by that saying, 'This opinion leaves desire and endeavour, but it does not leave that which may be ascribed to the man's own powers?'

Who can conceive of this? If desire and endeavour are left to Freewill, then why should they not be ascribed to it? If they are not to be ascribed, then how can they be left? Are this desire and endeavour, which subsist before grace, left even to that very grace which is to come, and not to Freewill? This is to be at the same time left and not left to this same

Freewill. If these are not paradoxes, or rather monsters, I do not know what monsters are.

SECT. 11. Freewill is not 'a negative, intermediate power of the will.'

But perhaps Diatribe is dreaming that there is something between being able to will good, and not being able to will good, which is the mere power of willing — distinct from any regard to good or evil. Thus, we are to evade the rocks by a sort of logical subtlety. We affirm that in the will of man, there is a certain power of willing, which cannot indeed incline to good without grace; and yet, even without grace, it does not directly will only evil. It is a pure and simple power of willing, which may be turned by grace upwards to good, and by sin downwards to evil. But what then becomes of that saying, 'having lost its liberty, it is compelled to serve sin?' Where, then, is that 'desire and endeavour' which is left? Where is that power of applying itself to those things which belong to eternal salvation? For that power of applying itself to salvation cannot be a mere abstract power of willing, unless salvation itself is called nothing.

Then again, desire and endeavour cannot be a mere power of willing, since desire must lean and endeavour somewhere, and cannot be carried towards nothing, or remain quiescent. In short, wherever Diatribe is pleased to turn herself, she cannot escape contradictions and conflicting expressions — so that, even Freewill herself is not so much a captive, as Diatribe who defends her. She so entangles herself in her attempts to give liberty to the will, that she gets bound with indissoluble chains, in company with her freedmaid.

Then again, it is a mere fiction of logic, that there is this middle faculty of mere willing in man; nor can it be proved by those who assert it.

Ignorance of things, and servile regard for words, has given birth to this fancy, as if the will must straightway be in substance, what we set it out to be in words. The Sophists have numberless figments of this sort. The truth is rather what Christ says: "He that is not with me is against me."

He does not say, 'He that is not with me, nor against me, but in the middle.' For, if God is in us, then Satan is absent, and only to will good is present with us. If God is absent, then Satan is present, and there is no will in us but towards evil. Neither God, nor Satan, allows a mere abstract power to will in us — but as you have rightly said, having lost our liberty, we are compelled to serve sin; that is, we will sin and wickedness; we speak sin and wickedness; we act sin and wickedness. See into what a corner Diatribe has been driven without knowing it, by invincible and most mighty Truth. Truth has made her wisdom folly, and compelled her, when meaning to speak against us, to speak for us, and against herself.

Freewill does this when she attempts anything good; for then, by opposing evil, she most of all does evil, and opposes good. Thus, Diatribe is as much a speaker as Freewill is an actor. Indeed, the whole Diatribe itself is nothing but an excellent performance of Freewill, condemning by defending, and defending by condemning — that is, she is twice a fool, while she would be thought wise.

SECT. 12. The approvable opinion compared with the other two.

The first opinion, then, as compared with itself, is such as to deny that man can will anything good; and yet it maintains that desire is somehow left to man, but this desire is not his. Let us now compare it with the other two.

'The second is harsher, which judges that Freewill has no power except to commit sin,' This, however, is Augustine's opinion, expressed in many other places, especially in his treatise on the Letter and Spirit (the fourth or fifth chapter, if I am not mistaken), where he uses these very words.

'That third opinion is the harshest of all, which maintains that Freewill is an empty name, and that all we do is necessarily under the bondage of sin.' Diatribe wages war with these two. Here I admit that probably I may not be German enough, or Latinist enough, to enunciate the subject matter perspicuously. But I call God to witness that I meant to say nothing else (and nothing else is to be understood) by the expressions used in these last two opinions, than what is asserted in the first opinion.

Nor did Augustine, I think, mean anything else; nor do I understand anything else by his words, than what the first opinion asserts. So that, in my view, the three opinions recited by Diatribe are only that one sentiment which I have promulgated. For when it has been conceded and settled that Freewill, having lost her freedom, is compelled into the service of sin, and has no power to will anything good, I can conceive nothing else from these expressions, except that Freewill is a bare word, the substance expressed by that word having been lost. Lost liberty, my art of grammar calls no liberty at all; and to attribute the name 'liberty' to that which has no liberty, is to attribute a bare name to it. If I wander from the truth here, let whoever can, recall me from my wanderings; if my words are obscure and ambiguous, let whoever can, make them plain and confirm them. I cannot call lost health, health; and if I were to ascribe such a property to a sick man, what have I given him but a bare name?

But away with such monstrous expressions! For, who can bear that abuse of language by which we affirm that man has Freewill, and yet, in the same breath, assert that he has lost his liberty, and is compelled into the service of sin, and can will nothing good. Such expressions are at variance with common sense, and absolutely destroy the use of speech. Diatribe is to be accused, rather than we: she blurts out her own words as if she were asleep, and gives no heed to what is spoken by others. She does not consider, I say, what it means, and what force it has, to declare that man has lost his liberty, and is compelled to serve sin, and has no power to do anything good. For if she were awake and observant, she would clearly see that the meaning of these three opinions, which she differentiates and opposes to one another, is one and the same thing. For the man who has lost his liberty, who is compelled to serve sin, and who cannot will good — what can be inferred more correctly concerning this man, than that he does nothing but sin, or will evil? Even the Sophists would establish this conclusion by their learned syllogisms. So that Madam Diatribe is very unfortunate in entering the fray with these two last pillions, while she approves the first, which is the same thing. Again, her manner is to condemn herself, and approve my sentiments, in one and the same article.

SECT. 13. Ecclesiasticus 15.14-18 resumed and expounded.

Let us now return to the passage in Ecclesiasticus; comparing that first opinion which you declare to be approvable, with it also, as we have now done with the other two. The opinion says, 'Freewill cannot will good.'

The passage from Ecclesiasticus is cited to prove that 'Freewill is nothing, and can do nothing,' The opinion which is to be confirmed by Ecclesiasticus, then, declares one thing, and yet that passage is alleged to confirm another. It is like a man going to prove that Christ is Messiah, adduces a passage which proves that Pontius Pilate was Governor of Syria; or something else which is as wide from it as the extreme notes of Just such is your proof of Freewill here — not to mention what I have dispatched already, that nothing here is clearly and certainly affirmed, or proved, as to what Freewill is, and what it can do. But it is worthwhile to examine this whole passage.

In the first place, he says, 'God made man in the beginning.' Here he speaks of the creation of man; and up to here, he says nothing either about Freewill, or about precepts.

It follows, 'and left him in the hand of his own counsel,' What do we have here? Is Freewill erected here? Not even here is there any mention of the precepts for which Freewill is required; nor do we read a syllable on this subject in the history of the creation of man. If anything is meant, therefore, by the words 'in the hand of his counsel,' it must rather be what we read in the first and second chapters of Genesis: 'Man was appointed lord of the things which were made, so as to have a free dominion over them ,' as Moses says, "Let us make man, and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea," etc. Nor can anything else be proved from these words. For in that state, man had power to deal with the creatures according to his own will, they being made his subjects. And he calls this man's counsel, in opposition to God's counsel. But after this, when he declared man to have been thus constituted the ruler, and to be left in the hand of his own counsel, he goes on:

"He added his own commands and precepts."

To what did he add them? Why, to the counsel and will of man; and over and above that establishment of the dominion of man over the rest of the creatures.

By these precepts, He took away from man the dominion over one part of His creatures (the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for instance), and rather willed that it should not be free. Having mentioned the adding of precepts, He next comes to man's will towards God, and the things of "If you are willing to keep the commandments, they shall preserve you," etc.

From this place, then, 'if you are willing,' is where the question of Freewill begins. So that we may learn from the Preacher, that man is divided between two kingdoms. In the one kingdom, he is borne along by his own will and counsel, without any precepts or commandments from God: to wit, in the exercise of his relations to the inferior creatures. Here he reigns, and is lord, having been left in the hand of his own counsel. It is not that God so leaves him even here, as not to cooperate with Him in all things; but that He leaves him a free use of the creatures, according to his own will, not restricting him by laws or injunctions. It is as if you said, by way of comparison, 'The Gospel has left us in the hand of our own counsel, to rule over the creatures, and to use them as we please; but Moses and the Pope have not left us in this counsel, but have restrained us by laws, and have rather subjected us to their wills.'

But in the other kingdom, man is not left in the hand of his own counsel, but is borne along and led by the will and counsel of God. So that, while in his own kingdom he is borne along by his own will, without the precepts of another; in the kingdom of God, he is borne along by the precepts of another, without his own will. And this is what the Preacher affirms, "He added precepts and commands. If you will," etc. [see fn]

SECT. 14. Ecclesiasticus at least does not decide for Freewill.

If these things are quite clear, then, we have proved that this passage from Ecclesiasticus makes against Freewill, not for it; as subjecting man to the precepts and will of God, and withdrawing him from his own will.

But if they are not quite clear, I have at least made out that this passage cannot be brought to support Freewill, because it is capable of quite a different interpretation from theirs. For instance, as I just mentioned, our interpretation is so far from being absurd, that it is most sound, and consonant with the whole tenour of Scripture. Whereas theirs is repugnant to that testimony, and it is fetched from this single passage in contradiction to the whole volume besides. We therefore stand firm and without fear in our good sense of the words, which negates Freewill until they confirm their affirmative, harsh, and forced sense of them.

When the Preacher therefore says, "If you are willing to keep the commandments, and to maintain acceptable faith, they shall preserve you" — I do not see how Freewill is proved by these words. The verb is in the conjunctive mood ('If you will'); which asserts nothing indicatively.

Take an example or two. 'If the devil is God, he is worthy to be worshipped,' 'If a donkey flies, it has wings,' 'If the will is free, grace is nothing,' If the Preacher meant to assert the freedom of the will, he should have said, 'Man can keep the commandments of God;' or, 'Man has power to keep the commandments,'

SECT. 15. What is meant by 'If you will,' etc.

But here Diatribe cavils that in saying, "If you will keep," the Preacher intimates that there is a will in man both to keep, and not to keep —

'for what meaning is there in saying to a man who has no will, 'If you will'? Would it not be ridiculous to say to a man who is blind, 'If you will see, you will find a treasure?' Or, to a deaf man, 'If you will hear, I will tell you a pretty story?' This would be only laughing at their misery.

I answer that these are the arguments of human reason, which is prone to pour out a flood of such wise sayings. Now I have to dispute not only with the Preacher, but with human reason, about an inference. That lady interprets the Scriptures of God by her own consequences and syllogisms, drawing them wherever she will. I will undertake my office willingly and with full confidence of success, because I know that she chatters nothing but what is foolish and absurd — and does this most of all, when she sets about showing her wisdom on sacred subjects.

Now, if I were to ask in the first place how the intimation is proved, or how it follows, that man has a will that is free — as often as it is said, 'If you will,' 'if you will do,' 'if you will hear,' — Diatribe will say, it is because the nature of words and the custom of speech among men seem to require so. She measures the things and words of God, then, by the things and usage of men. What can be more perverse than this, when the one sort is earthly, and the other heavenly? Thus she betrays her foolish self: how she thinks nothing but what is human, about God.

But what if I were to prove that the nature of words and the custom of speech, even among men, is not always such that it makes those persons objects of ridicule, who have no power to comply with the demand, as often as it is said to them, 'If you will,' if you will do,' 'if you will hear?'

How often do parents mock their children by bidding them to come to them, or to do this or that, for the mere purpose of making it appear how utterly incapable they are of doing so, and of forcing them to call upon the parent for his helping hand! How often does the faithful physician command his proud patient to do or to leave undone things which are either impossible, or noxious, that he may drive him to that knowledge of his disease, or of his weakness, through testing himself, to which he could not lead him by any other means! What is more frequent, or more common, than words of insult and provocation, if we would show either to friends or to enemies, what they can do, and what they cannot do? I mention these things, only by way of manifesting to human reason, how foolish Diatribe is in attaching her inferences to the Scriptures; and how blind she is, not to see that these inferences are not always realized, even in human words and actions.

Yet, if she but sees them fulfilled now and then, she quickly rushes forward precipitously, and pronounces that they take place generally, in all human and divine forms of speech. Thus she contrives to make a universal of a particular, as is the manner of her wisdom.

SECT. 16. Use of such forms of address.

Now, God deals with us as a father deals with his children, to show us our impotency of which we are ignorant; or as a faithful physician does to make our disease known to us; or he insults us as his enemies who proudly resist his counsel, proposing laws to us (which is the most convincing way of doing it), saying, 'do, hear, keep;' or, 'if you hear, if you are willing, if you do.' Will the following be a just inference from it? 'So then, we can will freely, otherwise God is mocking us.' Is this not rather the inference: 'So then, God is testing us, whether we are friends or foes.

If we are his friends, he may lead us to the knowledge of our impotency, by the law; or if we are proud enemies, then indeed he may truly and deservedly insult and deride us.'

This is the reason God gives laws; as Paul teaches. For human nature is so blind as not to know its own strength, or rather its own disease; and besides, it is so proud as to think that it knows and can do all things.

Now, God has no more effectual remedy for this pride and ignorance, than propounding his law, about which I will say more in its proper place.

Let it suffice to have taken but a sip of the cup here, that I might confute this inference of foolish, carnal wisdom: 'If you will — therefore the will is free,' Diatribe dreams that man is sound and whole, just as he is in the sight of his fellow men, in mere human affairs. Hence, she cavils and says, 'Man is mocked by such words as "if you will," "if you will do," "if you will hear," unless his will is free,' But Scripture declares man to be corrupt and captive; and not only so, but a proud despiser of God, and one who is ignorant of his corruption and captivity. So she plucks him by the sleeve, and endeavours to awaken him by such words as these, that he may own, even by sure experience, how incapable he is of any of these things.

SECT. 17. Diatribe is insincere in her inference.

But I will become the assailant myself in this conflict, and ask, 'If you indeed think, Madam Reason, that these inferences stand good ('if you will — therefore you can will freely'), then why do you not follow them?

You say in that approvable opinion of yours, that Freewill cannot will anything good. By what sort of inference, then, will it at the same time flow from this passage (as you say it does), 'If you are willing to keep,' that man can both will freely, and cannot will freely? Do sweet water and bitter flow from the same fountain? Jas 3.11 Are you not, even yourself, the greater mocker of man here, when you say that he is able to keep what he cannot even will or wish? It therefore follows on your part, that you do not think this a good inference, 'If you will — therefore you can will freely,' even though you maintain it so vehemently. Or else, from your heart, you do not affirm that the opinion is approvable which maintains that 'man cannot will good.' — Reason is so entrapped in the inferences and words of her own wisdom, as not to know what she says, or what she is talking about.

Unless, of course, Freewill can only be defended by arguments that mutually devour and make an end of each other (as indeed it is most worthy of her) — just as the Midianites destroyed themselves, by a mutual slaughter while making war against Gideon and the people of But let me expostulate still more at large with this wise Diatribe. The Preacher does not say, 'If you have a desire or endeavour to keep, which is nevertheless not to be ascribed to your own powers;' — as you might collect from his words. Rather, 'If you will keep the commandments, they will preserve you.' Now, if we drew inferences such as you are prone to do in your wisdom, we would infer, 'therefore, man can keep the commandments.' And thus, we would leave in man not only a little bit of a desire, or a sort of endeavouring, but we would ascribe to him the whole fulness and abundance of power to keep the commandments. Otherwise, the Preacher would be mocking the misery of man by commanding him to keep what he knew man is unable to keep. Nor would it be enough that man have the desire and endeavour. Not even by this would the Preacher escape the suspicion of using mockery: he must intimate that man has in him a power of keeping.

But let us suppose this desire and endeavour of Freewill is something.

What would we say to those Pelagians who, from this passage, were used to denying grace altogether, and who ascribed everything to Freewill?

Without doubt, the Pelagians have gained the victory if Diatribe's consequence is allowed. For the words of the Preacher import keeping, and not merely desiring or endeavouring. Now, if you deny to the Pelagians the inference of keeping, they will, in turn, much more properly deny you the inference of endeavouring. And if you take away complete

Freewill from them, they will take from you that little particle of it which you say remains — not allowing you to claim for a particle, what you have denied to the whole substance.

So that, whatever you urge against the Pelagians, who ascribe a whole to Freewill from this passage, will come much more forcibly from us, in contradiction to that little bit of a desire which constitutes your Freewill.

The Pelagians will also agree with us so far as to admit that, if their opinion cannot be proved from this passage, then much less can any other opinion be proved from it. For, if the cause is to be pleaded by inferences, then the Preacher argues most strongly of all for the Pelagians, as he speaks expressly of entire keeping. 'If you will keep the commandments.' Indeed, he speaks of faith also: 'If you will keep acceptable faith,' So that, by the same inference, we ought to have it in our power to keep faith also. However, this faith is the sole and rare gift of God, as Paul says.

In short, since so many opinions are enumerated in support of Freewill, and not one of them fails to seize for itself this passage from Ecclesiasticus, and since those opinions are different and contrary — it must follow that they deem the Preacher contradictory and opposite, each to the other severally, in the self-same words.

They can therefore prove nothing from him. Still, if that inference is admitted, he argues for the Pelagians only, an against all the rest. And so, he argues against Diatribe, who cuts her own throat here.

SECT. 18. Concludes that Ecclesiasticus proves nothing for Freewill, whether what is said is understood of Adam, or of men generally.

But I renew my first assertion; viz. that this passage from Ecclesiasticus patronises none of those, absolutely, who maintain Freewill; but it opposes them all. For that inference, 'if you will — therefore you can,' is inadmissible. And the true understanding of such passages as these is that, by this word and the like, man is warned of his impotency which, being ignorant and proud, if it were not for these divine warnings, he would neither admit nor feel.

And here I do not speak of the first man only, but of any man, and every man; though it is of little consequence whether you understand it of the first man, or of any other man whatsoever. For although the first man was not impotent through the presence of grace, God still shows him abundantly by this precept, how impotent he would be in the absence of grace.

Now if that man, having the Spirit, was not able to will good — that is, to will obedience — while his will was still new, and good was newly proposed to him, because the Spirit did not add it — then what could we, who do not have the Spirit, do towards the good which we have lost?

It was shown, therefore, in that first man, by a terrible example, for bruising our pride, what our Freewill can do when left to itself — yes, when urged and increased continually, more and more, by the Spirit of God. The first man could not attain to a more enlarged measure of the Spirit, of which he possessed the firstfruits, but fell from the possession of those firstfruits. How then should we, in our fallen state, have power to recover those firstfruits which have been taken from us? Especially since

Satan now reigns in us with full power — who laid the first man prostrate by a mere temptation, when he had not yet reigned in him.

It would be impossible to maintain a stronger debate against Free will, than by discussing this text of Ecclesiasticus in connection with the fall of Adam. But I do not have room for such a descant here, and perhaps the matter will present itself elsewhere. Meanwhile, let it suffice to have shown that the Preacher says nothing in support of Freewill here (which its advocates, however, consider to be their principal testimony); and that this and similar passages, 'If you will,' 'if you will hear,' 'if you will do,' do not declare what man can do, but only what he ought to do.

SECT. 19. Gen. 4.7 considered.

Another passage is cited by our Diatribe from the fourth chapter of Genesis, where the Lord says to Cain, "The desire for sin shall be subject to you, and you shall rule over it." 'It is shown here,' says Diatribe, 'that the motions of the mind towards evil may be overcome, and do not induce a necessity of sinning,'

This saying, that 'the motions of the mind towards evil may be overcome,' is ambiguous; but the general sentiment, consequence, and facts, compel us to this understanding of it: that 'it is the property of Freewill to overcome its own motions towards evil, and that those motions do not induce a necessity of sinning,' Why is it again omitted here, 'which is not ascribed to Free will? What need is there of the Spirit, of Christ, or of God, if Freewill can overcome the motions of the mind towards evil?

Again, what has become of that approvable opinion which says that Freewill cannot even will good?

Here, however, victory over evil is ascribed to this substance which neither wills nor wishes good. Our Diatribe's carelessness is beyond all measure here. Hear the truth of the matter in a few words. I have said before, man has it shown to him by such expressions as these, not what he can do, but what he ought to do. Cain is told, therefore, that he ought to rule over sin, and to keep its lustings in subjection to himself. But he neither did nor could do this, seeing that he was now pressed to the earth by the foreign yoke of Satan. It is notorious that the Hebrews frequently use the future indicative for the imperative: as in the twentieth chapter of Exodus; 'You shall not have any other Gods,' 'You shall not kill,' 'You shall not commit adultery,' and countless similar instances. On the contrary, if the words are taken indicatively, according to their literal meaning, they would become so many promises of God, who cannot lie; and thus, nobody would commit sin, and there would be no need, therefore, of these precepts. In fact, our translator would have rendered the words better in this place, if he had said, 'Let its desire be subject to you, and you rule over it;' just as it should also have been said to the woman, 'Be subject to your husband, and let him rule over you,' That it was not said indicatively to Cain, appears from this: in that case it would have been a divine promise; but it was not a divine promise, for the very reverse happened, and the very reverse was done by Cain. [long note]

SECT. 20. Deu. 30.19 considered.

Your third passage is from Moses, "I have set before your face the way of life and of death; choose that which is good,' etc. 'What could be said more plainly,' asks Diatribe? 'He leaves freedom of choice to man.'

I answer, what can be plainer than that you are blind here? I ask you, where does he have freedom of choice? In saying, 'choose?' So then, as soon as Moses says 'choose,' it comes to pass that they do choose! Again, therefore, the Spirit is not necessary. And since you so often repeat and hammer in the same things, let me also be allowed to say the same thing many times over.

If there is freeness of choice in the soul, then why has your approvable opinion said that the free will cannot will good? Can it choose without willing, or against its will? — But let us hear your simile.

It would be ridiculous to say to a man standing in a street where two ways meet, 'you see two ways; enter whichever you please,' when only one is open.

This is just what I said before about the arguments of carnal reason. She thinks that man is mocked by an impossible precept; whereas we say, he is admonished and excited by it, to see his own impotency. Truly then, we are in this sort of street; but only one way is open to us; or rather, no way is open. But it is shown to us by the law, how impossible it is for us to choose the one — leading to good, I mean — unless God gives us his Holy

Spirit. How broad and easy the other way is, if God allows us to walk in it.

Without mockery, then, and with all necessary gravity, it should be said to a man standing in the street, 'enter whichever of the two you please,' if either he has a mind to appear strong in his own eyes (being infirm), or if he maintains that neither of these ways is shut against him.

The words of the law, then, are spoken not to affirm the power of the will, but to enlighten blind reason, so that she may see what a nothing her light is, and what a nothing the power of the will is.

"By the law is the knowledge of sin," says Paul; he does not say the 'abolition,' or the 'avoidance,' of it. The principle and power of the law has for its essence the affording of knowledge, and that is only of sin — not the displaying or conferring of any power.

For this knowledge neither is power, nor confers power, but it instructs and shows that there is no power in that quarter, and it shows how great is the infirmity in that quarter. For what else can the knowledge of sin be, but the knowledge of our infirmity and of our wickedness? Nor does he say, 'by the law comes the knowledge of virtue, or good;' but all the law does, according to Paul, is to cause sin to be known.

This is that passage from which I drew my answer, 'that by the words of the law man is admonished and instructed what he ought to do, not what he can do;' that is, to know his sin, and not to believe that he has some power. So that, as often as you throw the words of the law in my face, I will answer you, my Erasmus, with this saying of Paul: "By the law is the knowledge of sin," not power in the will. Now, gather your larger

Concordances, and heap together all the imperative verbs into one chaotic pile (so they are not words of promise, but words of exaction and law), and I will quickly show you that these always intimate not what men do, or can do, but what they ought to do.

Your grammar-masters, and boys in the streets, know this; that by verbs of the imperative mood nothing else is expressed but what ought to be done. What is done, or may be done, must be declared by indicative verbs.

How does it happen then, that you theologians, as if you had fallen into a state of second childhood, no sooner get hold of a single imperative verb, than you are foolish enough to infer an indicative; as if an act were no sooner commanded, than of necessity it becomes straightway, a thing done, or at least practicable. For how many things happen between the cup and the lip, to prevent what you have ordered, and what was moreover quite practicable, from taking place? Such a distance is there between imperative and indicative verbs in common and most easy transactions. But, when the things enjoined, instead of being as near to us as the lip is to the cup, are more distant than heaven from earth —and, moreover, impracticable — you suddenly make indicatives for us out of imperatives. So that, you would have the things to have been kept, done, chosen, and fulfilled, or about to be so, as soon as the word of command has been given, we indeed 'do, keep, and choose,' by our own power.

SECT. 21. Passages from Deu. 30, etc.

In the fourth place, you adduce many like verbs of choosing, refusing, and keeping; such as, 'if you will keep,' 'if you will turn aside,' 'if you will choose,' etc. from the third and from the thirtieth chapter of Deuteronomy. 'All these expressions,' you say, 'would be unseasonable, if man's will were not free to do good.'

I answer, you also are very unseasonable, my Diatribe, in deriving Freewill from these verbs! For you professed to prove only desire and endeavour in your Freewill, and you adduced no passage which proves such endeavour, but instead, a string of passages which, if your consequence were valid, would assign 'a whole' to Freewill. Let us here, then, again distinguish between the words adduced from Scripture, and the consequence which Diatribe has appended to them. The words adduced are imperative, and only express what ought to be done. For Moses does not say, you have strength or power to choose, but only says

'choose, keep, do.' He delivers commands to do, but he does not describe man's power of doing. Yet the consequence added by this unschooled

Diatribe, infers that man can therefore do these things; otherwise they would be enjoined in vain. To which the answer is, 'Madam Diatribe, you draw a bad inference, and you do not prove your consequence. It is because you are blind and lazy that you think this consequence follows, and has been proved.' These injunctions, however, are not delivered unseasonably, or in vain, but are so many lessons by which a vain and proud man may learn his own diseased state of impotency, if he tries to do what is commanded. So again, your simile is to no purpose, where you say;

'Otherwise it would be just as if you were to say to a man who is so tied and bound, that he can only stretch out his arm to the left. See! you have a cup of most excellent wine at your right hand, and a cup of poison at your left: stretch out your hand to whichever side you please.'

I have a notion that you are mightily tickled with these similes. But all the while you do not perceive that, if your similes stand good, they prove much more than you have undertaken to prove; no, they prove what you deny and would have disapproved: namely, that Freewill can do everything. For, throughout your whole treatise, forgetting that you have said 'Freewill can do nothing without grace,' you prove that 'Freewill can do everything without grace,' Yes, this is what you do, in the end, by your consequences and similes. You make out that either Free will, left to herself, can do the things which are said and enjoined, or else they are idly, ridiculously, and unseasonably enjoined. However, these are but the old songs of the Pelagians, which even the Sophists have exploded, and you yourself have condemned. Meanwhile, you show by this forgetfulness and bad memory of yours, how you are both entirely ignorant of the cause, and indifferent to it. For what is more disgraceful to a rhetorician, than to continually discuss and prove things that are foreign to the point at issue; indeed, to continually harangue against both his cause and SECT. 22. His Scriptures prove nothing; his additions to Scripture are too much.

I therefore affirm again, that the words of Scripture adduced by you are imperative words, and neither prove anything, nor determine anything, on the subject of human power; they only prescribe certain things to be done, and to be left undone. While your consequences (or additions) and similes prove this (if they prove anything): that Freewill can do everything without grace.

This proposition, however, is not one which you have undertaken to prove, but have even denied. So that proofs of this kind are nothing but the strongest disproofs. For let me test now, whether it is possible to rouse Diatribe from her lethargy. Suppose I were to argue this way: When

Moses says, 'choose life, and keep the commandment,' unless a man can choose life and keep the commandment, it is ridiculous for Moses to enjoin this of man. By this argument, would I have proved that Freewill can do nothing good; or that it has endeavoured, but not of its own power? No, I would have proved by a pretty bold sort of comparison, that either man can choose life and keep the commandment (as he is ordered to do), or else Moses is a ridiculous teacher. But who would dare to call Moses a ridiculous teacher? It follows, therefore, that man can do the things commanded of him.

This is the way in which Diatribe continually argues against her own thesis. She is engaged by it, not to maintain any such position as this, but to show a certain power of endeavouring in Freewill. However, she is so far from proving it, that she makes little mention of it in the whole series of her arguments. Indeed, she rather proves the contrary, so as to be, herself, the ridiculous speaker and arguer everywhere.

With respect to its being ridiculous, it is according to the simile you introduced — that a man tied by the right arm is bid to stretch out his hand to the right, when he can only stretch it to the left. Would it be ridiculous, I ask, if a man who was tied by both hands, were to proudly maintain or ignorantly presume that he could do what he pleased on both sides of him? To bid such a man to stretch out his hand to whichever side he likes, is not with the design of laughing at his captive state, but to evince the false presumption of his own liberty and power, or to make notorious to him, his ignorance of his captivity and misery. Diatribe is always dressing up for us a man of her own invention, who either can do as he is bid, or at least knows that he cannot. But such a man is nowhere to be found. And if there were such a man, then it would indeed be true that, either impossibilities are ridiculously enjoined of him, or else the Spirit of Christ is given in vain.

But the Scripture sets before us a man, who is not only bound, wretched, captive, sick, and dead, but who adds this plague of blindness (through the agency of Satan his prince) to his other plagues; and so he thinks that he is at liberty, happy, unshackled, able, in good health, and alive. For Satan knows that if man were acquainted with his own misery, he would not be able to retain a single individual of the race in his kingdom. And that is because God could not choose but at once to pity and help him, once he had come to recognise his misery, and cried out for relief. Seeing that he is a God so greatly extolled throughout the whole Scripture, as being near to the contrite in heart, that in Isa 61.1-3, Christ declares himself to have been even sent into the world by Him, for the purpose of preaching the Gospel to the poor, and healing the broken-hearted. Luk 4.18

So that, it is Satan's business to keep men from the recognition of their own misery; and to keep them in the presumption of their own ability to do all that is commanded. But the legislator Moses' business is the very opposite of this: HE is to lay open man's misery to him by the law so that, having hereby broken his heart, and confounded him with the knowledge of himself, he may prepare him for grace, and send him to Christ, and so he may be saved forever. What the law does, therefore, is not ridiculous, but exceedingly serious and necessary.

Those who are now brought to understand these matters, understand at the same time, without any difficulty, that Diatribe proves absolutely nothing by her whole series of arguments; while she does nothing but get together a parcel of imperative verbs from the Scriptures, of which she knows neither the meaning nor the use. Having done so, she next adds her own consequences and carnal similes, and thus mixes up such a potent cake, that she asserts and proves more than she had advanced, and argues against herself.

It will not be necessary, therefore, to pursue my rapid course through her several proofs any further, since they are all dismissed by dismissing one, as they all rest on one principle. Still, I will go on to recount some of them, that I may drown her in the very flood in which she meant to SECT. 23. Isa. 1.19; 30.21; 45.20; 52.12; and some other passages considered; they prove too much; no distinction between Law and Gospel, etc.

In Isaiah 1.19 we read, "If you are willing, and will hear, you will eat the good of the land." It would have been more consistent, as Diatribe thinks, to have and said, If I am willing;' 'If I am unwilling;' on the supposition that the will is not free.

The answer to this suggestion is sufficiently manifest from what has been said above. But what congruity would there be in its being said here, 'If I will, you shall eat of the good of the land?' Does Diatribe, from her exceeding wisdom, imagine that the good of the land could be eaten against the will of God; or that it is a rare and new thing for us to receive good only if HE wills?

So it is in Isaiah 30, "If you seek, seek; turn, and come." Diatribe says, 'To what purpose is it that we exhort those who have no power at all over themselves? Is it not as though we said to a man bound with fetters, move yourself that way?'

Rather say, to what purpose is it that you quote passages which, of themselves, prove nothing, but by adding a consequence — that is, by corrupting their meaning — ascribe everything to Freewill? Whereas, only a sort of endeavour was to be proved, and that was not ascribable to I would say the same about that testimony in Isa 45.20, "Assemble yourselves, and come; turn to me, and you shall be saved: "and of that in Isa 52.1-2, "Arise, arise, shake yourself from the dust, loose the chains from off your neck." Also that in Jer 15.19: "If you will turn, I will turn you; and if you will separate the precious from the vile, you shall be as my mouth." But Malachi makes still more evident mention of the endeavour of Freewill, and of the grace which is prepared for the endeavourer. He says, "Turn to me, says the Lord of Hosts, and I will turn to you, says the In these passages, our Diatribe reveals no difference at all between law words and gospel words. So truly blind and ignorant is she, that she does not see which is Law and which is Gospel. Out of the whole book of Isaiah, she does not bring a single law word, except that first one, 'If you have been willing.' All the other passages are made up of gospel words, by which the contrite and afflicted are called to take comfort from offers of But Diatribe makes law words of them. And I ask, what good will someone do in theology, or in the Scriptures, who has not yet gotten so far as to know what the Law is, and what the Gospel is; or if he does know, disdains to observe the difference? Such a one must confound everything — heaven and hell, life and death — and he will take no pains to know any thing at all about Christ. Later I will admonish my Diatribe more copiously on this subject. Look now at those words of Jeremiah and Malachi: 'If you will turn,' 'I will turn you,' and, 'Turn to me, and I will turn to you.' Does it follow, 'Turn,' therefore you can turn? Does it follow,

'Love the Lord your God with all your heart,' therefore you shall be able to love him with all your heart? What is the conclusion, then, from arguments of this kind, if not that Freewill does not need the grace of God, for she can do everything by her own power? How much more properly are the words taken, just as they stand! 'If you have been turned, I also will turn you,' that is, 'if you stop sinning, I also will stop punishing;' and if you lead a good life when you are converted, I also will do you good, and will turn your captivity and your evils.

But it does not follow from these words, that a man can turn to God by his own power; nor do the words affirm this. They simply say, 'If you are converted,' admonishing man what he ought to be. Now, once he has known and seen this, he would seek the power which he does not have, from the source where he might gain it. That is, if Diatribe's Leviathan

(her appendage and consequence, I mean) did not get in the way, saying, 'It would be said in vain, "Turn," unless a man could turn by his own power,' What sort of a saying this is, and what it proves, has been declared abundantly.

It is the effect of stupor or lethargy to suppose that Freewill is established by those words, 'Turn,' 'If you will turn,' and the like; and not to perceive that, on the same principle, it would also be established by this saying,

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart;" since the demand in the one case, is equivalent to the command in the other. Nor is the love of God, and of all his commandments, less required than our own conversion, since the love of God is our true conversion.

And yet no man argues for Freewill from that commandment of love; rather, all argue it from these words: 'If you are willing,' 'If you will hear,'

'Turn,' and the like. If it does not follow from the commandment to 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart,' that Freewill is anything, or has any power, then assuredly it does not follow from these words: 'If you will,' 'If you hear,' 'Turn,' and the like. These either demand less, or they demand less vehemently, than the commandment to 'Love God,' and Whatever reply is therefore made to that saying, 'Love God' — forbidding us to conclude Freewill from it — the same reply is to be made to all other expressions of command or demand, forbidding the same conclusion.

Namely, the command to love shows 'the matter of the law' — what we ought to do — but it does not show the power of the human will — what we can do; or rather, what we cannot do. The same is shown by all other expressions of demand. It is evident that even the schoolmen, with the exception of the Scotists and the Moderns, assert that man cannot love

God with his whole heart. From this it follows that neither can man fulfil any of the other commandments, since they all hang on this, as Christ testifies. Mat 22.40 Thus, it remains a just conclusion, even from the testimony of the scholastic doctors, that the words of the law do not prove a power in the free will; rather, they show what we ought to do, and what we cannot do.

SECT. 24. Mal. 3.7 more particularly considered.

But our Diatribe, with still greater absurdity, not only infers an indicative sense from that saying of Zechariah, 'Turn to me,' but she maintains that it even proves a power of endeavouring in Freewill, and grace prepared for the endeavourer.

Here at last she remembers her endeavour. And by a new art of grammar, 'to turn' signifies for her the same as 'to endeavour.' Thus the sense is,

'Turn to me,' that is, 'endeavour to turn, and I will turn to you,' that is, I will 'endeavour to turn' to you. At last, then, she attributes endeavour even to God — intending perhaps to prepare grace for His endeavourings also. For if 'to turn' signifies to endeavour in one place; why not in all?

Again, in that passage of Jeremiah, 'If you separate the precious from the vile,' she maintains that not only 'endeavour,' but even 'freedom of choice,' is proved — what before she had taught us was lost, and turned into a necessity of serving sin. You see, then, that Diatribe truly possesses a free will in her handlings of Scripture, by which she compels words of one and the same form, to prove endeavour in one place, and free choice in another, just as she pleases.

But bidding adieu to such vanities, the word 'turn' properly has two uses in Scripture: a legal, and an evangelical one. In its legal use, it is an exacter and commander — requiring not only endeavour, but change of the whole life. Jeremiah frequently uses it this way, saying, 'Turn every one from his evil way,' 'Turn to the Lord,' where it evidently involves an exacting of all the commandments. When it is used evangelically, it is a word of divine promise and consolation. By this use, nothing is demanded from us, but the grace of God is offered to us. Such is that use in Psalm 126: 'When the Lord turns again the captivity of Zion,' and Psalm 116, 'Turn again, then, to your rest, O my soul!'

And thus Zechariah contrives to dispatch both sorts of preaching (law as well as grace) in a very short compendium. It is all law, and the sum of the law, when he says, 'Return to me.' It is grace when he says, 'I will return to you.' Therefore, as far as Freewill is proved by that saying, 'Love the Lord' — or by any other saying of any particular law — just so far and no farther is it proved by this summary law word, 'Turn.' It is the part of a wise reader of Scripture then, to observe which are law words, and which are grace words, so that he may not jumble them all together, like the filthy Sophists and this yawning Diatribe.

SECT. 25. Eze. 18.23 considered.

For see now, how she treats that famous passage in Ezekiel 18, "As I live, says the Lord, I would not have the death of a sinner, but rather that he be converted and live." First, 'It is so often repeated,' she says, 'in the course of this chapter — "shall turn away," "has done," "has wrought" — in respect to both good and evil. Where then are those who deny that man does anything?'

What an excellent consequence is here! She was going to prove desire and endeavour in Free will, but then she proves the whole act, everything done to the uttermost by Freewill. Where now are those who maintain the necessity of grace and of the Holy Spirit? For this is her ingenious way of arguing:

'Ezekiel says, If the wicked man turns away from his wickedness and does justice and judgment, he shall live. Why, then, the wicked man presently does so, and he can do so.'

Ezekiel intimates what ought to be done; Diatribe considers this as what is done, and has been done — again introducing a new sort of grammar by which she may teach us that it is the same thing to owe, as to have — it is the same thing to be enacted, as to be performed — the same thing to demand, as to pay.

After this, she lays hold on that sweetest of gospel words, 'I would not have the death of a sinner,' and gives this turn to it. Does the holy Lord deplore that death of his people, which he works in them himself? If he would not have the death of a sinner, then truly, it is to be imputed to our own will if we perish. But what can you impute to a being who has no power to do anything, either good or evil?

Pelagius also sang the same sort of song when he ascribed to Freewill not only desire and endeavour, but complete power to fulfill and do everything. For these consequences prove this power if they prove anything, as I said before. And therefore, they fight as stoutly, and even more so, against Diatribe herself (who denies this power in Freewill, and would prove endeavour only), as against us who deny Freewill altogether.

But without dwelling on her ignorance, I will state the matter as it really is.

SECT. 26. The true meaning of Eze.

It is a gospel word, and a word of sweetest consolation to poor miserable sinners, when Ezekiel 18.23 says, "I would not have the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live, by all means." So is that of Psalm 30.5 also, "For his wrath is but for a moment, and his will towards us is life rather than death." And that of the Psalm, "How sweet is your mercy, Lord!" Psa 109.21 DRA Also, "Because I am merciful." Jer 3.12

And that saying of Christ, in Matthew 11.28, "Come to me, all you who labour, and I will refresh you." Also Exo 20.6, "I show mercy to those who love me, to many thousands." Indeed, what is more than half of the Scripture but mere promises of grace, by which mercy, life, peace, and salvation are offered to men? And what other import do these words of promise have than this: "I would not have the death of a sinner?" Is it not the same thing to say, 'I am merciful,' as to say, 'I am not angry,' 'I do not wish to punish,' 'I do not wish you to die,' 'I wish to pardon you,' 'I wish to spare you?' Now, if these divine promises did not stand in the word, to raise up those whose consciences have been wounded with the sense of sin, and terrified with the fear of death and judgment, what place would there be for pardon, or for hope?

What sinner would not despair? But, just as Freewill is not proved by other words of pity, or promise, or consolation, so neither is it proved by this, "I would not have the death of a sinner."

But our Diatribe, again confounding the distinction between law words and words of promise, makes this place from Ezekiel a law word, and expounds it thus: 'I would not have the death of a sinner; that is, I would not have that he sins mortally, or becomes a sinner guilty of death; but rather that he turn from his sin, if he has committed any, and so live.' For, if she did not expound it so, then it would not serve her purpose at all.

But such an exposition entirely subverts and withdraws this most persuasive word of Ezekiel, 'I would not have the death of a sinner,' If we are determined to read and understand the Scriptures in this way, by the exercise of our own blindness, then what wonder is it if they are obscure and ambiguous? For he does not say, 'I would not have the sin of a man,' but 'I would not the death of a sinner.' This clearly intimates that he speaks of the punishment of sin, which the sinner is experiencing for his sin: that is, the fear of death. Yes, He raises up and consoles the sinner, now laid on this bed of affliction and despair, that he may not quench the smoking flax, or break the bruised reed, but may excite hope of pardon and salvation; that he may rather be converted (I mean, converted to salvation from the punishment of death) and live; that is, be happy, and rejoice in a quiet conscience."

For this also must be observed: that the voice of the law is sounded only over those who neither feel nor acknowledge their sin (as Paul says in Rom 3.20, "By the law is the knowledge of sin"). So too, the word of grace comes only to those who, feeling their sin, are afflicted and tempted to despair. Thus it is, that in all law words, you see sin charged by showing us what we ought to do. In all words of promise, on the other hand, you see intimated the misery which sinners labour under (that is, those who are to be raised up from their dejection by them). As here, the word, 'I would not have the death of a sinner,' expressly names death and the sinner — the very evil which is felt, as well as the very man who feels it.

But in this word, 'Love God with all your heart,' what is pointed out is the good we owe, not the evil we feel, that we may be brought to acknowledge how incapable we are of doing that good.

SECT. 27. Eze. 18.23 negatives Freewill, instead of proving it.

So then, nothing could have been more unaptly adduced in support of Freewill, than this passage from Ezekiel; which even fights against it most lustily. For in this, it is implied how Freewill is affected, and what it is able to do when sin has been discovered, and when the matter is now to turn itself to God. It is implied in this, I say, that it could do nothing but fall into a still worse state, adding desperation and impenitence to its other sins, unless God presently comes to its succour, and recalls and raises it up by his word of promise. For God's eagerness in promising grace to restore and raise up the sinner, is a very mighty and trustworthy argument, that Freewill of herself cannot help but fall from bad to worse

— and as the Scripture says, "to the deepest hell."

Do you think that God is so light-minded as to thus fluently pour out words of promise, when they are not necessary to our salvation — for the mere pleasure of talking? You see from this fact, then, that not only do all law words stand opposed to Freewill, but even all words of promise utterly confute it. In other words, the whole Scripture is at war with it. So that this saying, 'I would not have the death of a sinner,' has no other object, as you perceive, than that of preaching and offering divine mercy throughout the world; which none but those who have been afflicted and harassed to death, receive with joy and gratitude. These do so, because the law has already fulfilled its office in them, by teaching the knowledge of sin; while those who have not yet experienced this office of the law, and who neither acknowledge their sin, nor feel their death, despise the mercy promised in that word.

SECT. 28. How far God may be said to bewail the death He produces.

But, as to why some are touched by the law and others are not, so that the former take in the grace offered, and the latter despise it, this is another question, and one that is not treated by Ezekiel in this place. He speaks of God's preached and offered mercy, not of His secret and awful will, by the counsel of which he ordains whom and what sort of persons

He wills to be made capable of receiving, and to become actual participants of his preached and offered mercy. This will of God is not the object of our researches, but of our reverent adoration. It is by far the most venerable secret of the divine majesty, which He keeps locked up in his own bosom, and which is much more religiously prohibited to us, than the Corycian caves are prohibited to the countless multitude.

When Diatribe now cavillingly asks whether 'the holy Lord bewails that death of his people, which he produces in them himself? — a suggestion too absurd to be entertained,' I answer (as I have already done) that we must argue in one way concerning God, or the will of God, insofar as His will is proclaimed to us, revealed, offered for our acceptance, and made the ground of worship; and argue in another way, concerning God insofar as he is unproclaimed, unrevealed, unoffered, and unworshipped.

So far as God hides himself, and chooses to be unknown by us, we can have nothing to do with him. Here is the true application of that saying,

'What is above us, is nothing to us,' And lest anyone suppose this is my distinction, let him know that I follow Paul, who writes to the Thessalonians concerning Antichrist (2Thes 2.4), that "he would exalt himself above all that is proclaimed by God, and that is worshipped."

This plainly intimates that a man might be exalted above God, so far as he is proclaimed and worshipped — that is, above that word and worship by which God is made known to us, and maintains intercourse with us. But if God is regarded not as He is an object of worship, and as He is proclaimed, but as He is in his own nature and majesty, then nothing can be exalted above Him, but everything is under His powerful hand.

God must be reserved to himself, then, so far as He is regarded in the majesty of his own nature. For in this regard, we can have nothing to do with him; nor is it in this regard that He wills to be dealt with by us. But so far as He is clothed with his word, and displayed to us by it — that word by which He has offered himself to our acceptance; that word which is his glory and beauty, and with which the Psalmist celebrates him as clothed — so far, and only so far, we transact with Him. In this regard, we affirm that the holy God does not bewail that death of his people which He himself works in them; but He bewails that death which He finds in his people and is taking pains to remove. For this is what the proclaimed

God is about, even taking away sin and death, that we may be saved. For "He has sent his word and healed them."

But the God which is hidden in the majesty of his own nature, neither bewails nor takes away death; but works life and death, and all things in all things. For when acting in this character, He does not bound himself by his word, but has reserved to himself the most perfect freedom in the exercise of his dominion over all things.

But Diatribe beguiles herself through her ignorance, making no distinction between the proclaimed God, and the hidden God; that is, between the word of God, and God himself. God does many things which he has not shown us in his word.

He also wills many things which he has not shown us that he wills, in his word. For instance, he does not will the death of a sinner — not according to his word, truly — but he wills it according to that inscrutable will of his.

Now, our business is to look at his word, and to leave that inscrutable will of his to itself: for we must be directed in our path by that word, and not by that inscrutable will. Indeed, who could direct himself by that inscrutable and inaccessible will? It is enough for us to barely know that there is a certain inscrutable will in God.

What that will wills, why it so wills, and how far it so wills, are matters which it is altogether unlawful for us to inquire into, to wish for knowledge about, to trouble ourselves with, or to approach even with our touch. In these matters, we have only to adore and to fear. So then, it is rightly said, 'If God does not will death, we must impute it to our own will that we perish;' — rightly, I say, if you speak of the proclaimed God. For he would have all men to be saved, 1Tim 2.4 coming, as he does, with his word of salvation to all men; and the fault is in our own will, which does not admit him; as he says, in Mat 23.37, "How often would I have gathered your children, and you would not?" But why this majesty of His does not remove this fault of our will, or change it in all men (seeing that it is not in the power of man to do so); or why he imputes this fault of his will to man, when man cannot be without it — these are questions which it is not lawful for us to ask; and which, if you were to ask them, you would never get answered. The best answer is that which Paul gives in Rom 9.20: "Who are you that replies against God?" Let these remarks suffice for this passage from Ezekiel, and let us go on to the rest.

SECT. 29. Exhortations, promises, etc. of Scripture, are useless.

After this, Diatribe objects that if no one has it in his power to keep what is commanded, then all the exhortations with which the Scripture so much abounds — together with those manifold promises, threatenings, expostulations, upbraidings, beseechings, blessings and cursings, and those numerous swarms of precepts — are necessarily without meaning.

Diatribe is always forgetting the question at issue, and proving something different from what she undertook to prove. Nor does she perceive how much more strongly everything she says, is against herself than against us. For she proves from all these passages a liberty and power to keep all the commandments, by force of the inference which she suggests from the words quoted. But all the while she meant only to prove 'such a Freewill as can will nothing good without grace, together with a sort of endeavour, which is not to be ascribed however to its own powers.' I see no proof of such endeavour in any of the passages quoted. I see only a demand for those actions which ought to be performed. I have said this too often already; but such frequent repetition is necessary because

Diatribe so often blunders upon the same string, putting off her reader with an useless profusion of words.

SECT. 30. Deu. 30.11-14 considered.

Nearly the last passage which she adduces from the Old Testament, is that of Moses in Deut. 30.11-14: "This commandment, which I command you this day, is not above you, nor far off from you, nor placed in heaven, that you might say, who of us is able to ascend up into heaven to bring it down to us, that we may hear and fulfil it? But the word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it."

Diatribe maintains that it is declared in this place, that we not only have power to do what is enjoined, but that it is downhill work to do so; that is, it is easy or at least not difficult.

Thanks to you for your immense learning! If then Moses so clearly pronounces that there is not only a faculty in us, but even a facility to keep all the commandments, then why submit to all this toil? Why have we not at once produced this passage, and asserted Freewill in a field that is without opponent? What need do we have for Christ any longer?

What need of the Spirit? We have at length found a place which stops every mouth, and distinctly pronounces not only that the will is free, but that the observance of all the commandments is easy! How foolish Christ was to purchase that unnecessary Spirit for us at the price of his own outpoured blood, that it might be made easy for us to keep the commandments. It is a facility which it now seems that we possess by nature! No, let Diatribe herself recant her own words, in which she said that Freewill can will nothing good without grace; and let her now say that Freewill is of so great a virtue as not only to will good, but to keep even the greatest and all the commandments with great ease.

O, see what the result is of having a mind which feels no interest in the cause that is pleaded! See how impossible it is for this mind not to betray itself! Is there a need to confute Diatribe any longer? Who can confute her more thoroughly than she confutes herself? This, truly, is the animal which devours its own stomach. How true is the proverb, 'a liar ought to have a good memory!'

I have spoken on this passage in my commentary on Deuteronomy. I shall therefore treat it concisely here, shutting out Paul from our discussion, who handles this passage with great power in Romans 10. You will perceive that nothing at all is affirmed here, nor is one single syllable uttered about facility or difficulty, about the power or the impotency of Freewill or of man, to keep or not to keep the commandment — nothing except that those who entangle the Scriptures in the net of their own consequences and fancies, must thereby render them obscure and ambiguous to themselves, in order to make what they please of them.

But now, if you have no eyes, at least turn your ears to what is spoken here, or strike your hand over the letters. Moses says, 'it is not above you, nor placed afar off, nor seated in heaven, nor beyond the sea,' What is the meaning of 'above you'? 'afar off'? 'seated in heaven'? or 'across the sea'? Will they even make our grammar and the most common words obscure to us — till they make it impossible for us to say anything that is certain — just to affirm their claim that the Scriptures are obscure?

According to my grammar, it is not quality or quantity of human strength, but distance of place, which is meant by these words. What is expressed by 'above you' is not a certain power of the will, but a place which is above us. So the words 'afar off,' 'across the sea,' 'in heaven,' do not denote any power in man, but a place that is removed from us — upwards, to the right hand, to the left hand, backwards, or forwards.

There may be those perhaps, who will laugh at my thick-headed way of speaking, when with out-stretched hands I present a sort of chewed morsel to these full-grown gentlemen, as though they had not yet learned their A-B-C's, and teach them that syllables must be combined into words. But what can I do, when I see men hunting for darkness in the midst of such clear light, and studiously wishing to be blind; after adding up such a series of ages to us, so many geniuses, so many saints, so many martyrs, so many doctors; after vaunting this passage of Moses with such vast authority — although they do not deign to inspect the syllables of which it consists, nor to put so much of a constraint on their own thoughts as to consider for once the passage of which they boast.

Go tell us now, Diatribe, how does it come to pass that one obscure individual sees what so many public characters, and the nobles of so many ages, have not seen? Assuredly, this passage proves they have not been seldom blind, if but a little child had sat in judgment upon them.

Then, what does Moses mean by these most obvious and clear words, if not that he has discharged to perfection, his office as a faithful lawgiver?

He has brought it to pass that there is no cause why they did not know, and have in array before them, all the commands of God — no room is left for them to urge by way of excuse, that they did not know or did not have the commandments, or must seek them from some other quarter. The effect of this would be that, if they did not keep them, the fault would be neither in the law, nor in the lawgiver, but in themselves — for they have the law; and the lawgiver has taught them. So that, there is no plea of ignorance remaining for them, but only a charge of negligence and of disobedience. He is saying,

'It is not necessary to fetch laws from heaven or from the parts beyond the seas, or from afar off; nor can you pretend either that you have not heard them, or that you do not possess them: you have them near to you, they are what you have heard by the command of God from my lips; you have understood them with your heart, and have received them as read and expounded by the mouth of the Levites who are continually in your midst. This very word and book of mine is witness. It remains only that you may do them.'

What is ascribed here to Freewill, I ask, save that she is required to fulfil the laws which she has? And the excuse of ignorance and lack of laws is

SECT. 31. Some of the Old Testament witnesses for Freewill.

These are nearly all the texts which Diatribe adduces from the Old Testament in support of Freewill; by releasing them, we leave none remaining which are not released as well — whether she brings more, or intends to bring more, since she can bring nothing but a parcel of imperative, or conjunctive, or optative verbs, by which is signified not what we can do, or are doing (as I have replied to Diatribe, so often repeating the same thing), but what we ought to do, and what is required of us, to the end that our own impotency may become notorious to us, and the knowledge of sin be granted.

If these texts indeed prove anything, through the addition of consequences and similes which are the invention of human reason, they prove that Freewill possesses not only endeavour, or some small particle of desire, but an entire power and the freest ability to do all things without the grace of God, and without the aid of his Holy Spirit.

So that, nothing is further from the thing proved by this whole discourse that has been trodden into us — as it has been, by continual repetitions — than the proposition which she had undertaken to prove. Namely, 'that approvable opinion, by which Freewill is determined to be so impotent, that it can will nothing good without grace; and that it is compelled to serve sin; and that it possesses endeavour, which is not to be ascribed to its own energies.' Truly, this is a monster which can at the same time do nothing by its own energies, and yet it possesses a power to endeavour in its own energies. And so it consists by a most manifest contradiction.

SECT. 32. New Testament Scriptures for Freewill considered, beginning with Mat 23.37-39.

We come now to the New Testament, where a large force of imperative verbs is again mustered into the wretched service of Freewill. And the auxiliaries of carnal reason, such as consequences and similes, are fetched in. This is like a picture, or a dream, in which you see the Lord of the flies, with his lances of straw and shields of hay, set in battle array against a real and well-appointed army of human warriors.

Such is the kind of warfare which the human dreams of Diatribe, carry on against troops of divine testimonies.

First, like the Achilles of the flies, she marches out that text in Mat 23.37:

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I would have gathered your children together, and you would not?" 'If all things are done by necessity,' she says, 'might not Jerusalem have justly answered the Lord, Why consume yourself with vain tears? If you were unwilling that we listen to the Prophets, why did you send them? Why impute to us what has been done by your own will, which is our necessity?' So much for Diatribe.

My reply is this: granting for the moment, that this inference and proof of Diatribe's is good and true, what is proved by it, I ask? Is it that approvable opinion which says that Freewill cannot will good? Why, here is proved a will that is free, that is every bit whole, and is able to do everything which the Prophets have spoken! Diatribe did not take it upon herself to prove this sort of will in man. No indeed; let Diatribe herself be the respondent here, and let her answer us. If Freewill cannot will good, then why it is imputed to her that she did not hear the Prophets? Being teachers of good, why was it not possible for her to hear through her own strength? Why does Christ weep 'vain tears,' as though they could have willed what he assuredly knew that they could not will? Let Diatribe deliver Christ from a charge of madness, I say, in support of that approvable opinion of hers, and immediately our opinion will be liberated from this Achilles of the flies.

So that this text of Matthew either proves a complete Freewill, or else it fights against Diatribe herself, as stoutly as against us, laying her prostrate with her own weapons. I assert, as I have done before, that the secret will of God, as regarded in the majesty of his own nature, is not matter of debate. The rashness of man — which through a continual perverseness, always leaves necessary topics to attack and counter it — should be called away and withdrawn from occupying herself in scrutinizing those secrets of His majesty, which it is impossible to penetrate. For God dwells in light which no man can approach; as Paul testifies. (1Tim 6.16) Let her rather occupy herself with the incarnate

God, or (as Paul says) with Jesus the crucified: the one in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, but hidden. He will abundantly teach her what she ought to know, and not know. It is the incarnate God then, who speaks here. I would, and you would not. The incarnate God, I say, was sent into the world for this purpose: that he might be willing, that he might speak, that he might do, that he might suffer, that he might offer all things which are necessary for salvation, to all men.

Although he stumbles upon many who, being either left or hardened by that secret will of His majesty, do not receive him — willing as he is, speaking, working, and offering as he does. This is just what John says,

'The light shines in darkness, and the darkness does not comprehend it.'

And again, 'He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.' Joh 1.5,11 Thus, it is the act of this incarnate God to weep, wail, and groan over the destruction of the wicked, while the will of Majesty purposely leaves and reprobates some, that they may perish. Nor should we inquire why he does so, but to reverence God, who is both able and willing to do such things. No one, I suppose, will cavil here, that the will of which it is said,

'how often I would,' was exhibited to the Jews even before God's incarnation. For they are charged with having slain the Prophets who lived before Christ, Mat 23.31 and by so doing, with having resisted his will.

Christians know that everything which was done by the Prophets, was done by them in the name of that Christ who was to come; of whom it had been promised that he would become the incarnate God. So that whatever has been offered to man by the ministers of the word, from the beginning of the world, may be rightly called the will of Christ.

SECT. 33. The reality of God's secret will is maintained.

But reason, who is quick-scented and saucy, will say here, 'This is an admirable refuge which you have discovered. So then, as often as you are pressed by the force of your adversary's arguments, you have but to run back to this terrible will of sovereignty, and you compel your antagonist to silence when he has become troublesome — just as the astrologers evade all questions about the motions of the whole heavens, by their invention of Epicycles.'

I answer, It is not my invention but a direction confirmed by the divine Scriptures. Thus speaks Paul in Rom 9.19: "Why does God complain then? Who resists his will? O man, who are you that contends with God?"

"Does the potter not have the power?" and the rest. And before him, Isaiah said in 58.2, "For they seek me daily, and desire to know my ways, as a nation which has done righteousness. They ask of me the ordinances of justice, and desire to draw near to God." In these words, I imagine, it is abundantly shown to us that it is not lawful for man to scrutinize the will of sovereignty. Besides, this the kind of question which most of all leads perverse men to attack that awful will; so that it is especially seasonable to exhort them to silence and reverence when we prosecute it.

In other questions, where the matters treated are those which allow for an explanation, and which we are commanded to explain, I do not proceed this way.

Now if a man will not yield to my admonition, but persists in scrutinizing the counsels of that will, I let him go on and fight with God, as the giants did of old, waiting to see what sort of triumphs he carries off. And I am very sure in the meantime, that he will take nothing from our cause, and confer nothing upon his own. For it will remain fixed, that either he must prove Freewill to be capable of doing everything, or else the Scriptures which he quotes must contradict his own position. Whichever of these is the result, he lies prostrate as a conquered man, and I am found standing on my feet as the conqueror.

SECT. 34. Mat. 19.17 and other like passages considered.

Your second text is Mat 19.17. "If you will enter into life, keep the commandments." Diatribe asks, 'With what face could it be said, "If you will," to a man whose will is not free?' I reply to her, Does this saying of Christ's then establish that the will is free?

Why, you meant to prove that Freewill can will nothing good, and will necessarily serve sin if grace is out of the way. With what face, then, do you now make it all free?

The same may be said of the words, 'If you will be perfect,' if any man will come after me,' 'whoever would save his soul,' 'if you love me,' 'if you abide in me.' — Indeed, let all the conjunctions 'if,' and all the imperative verbs, as I have said, be collected together to assist Diatribe, at least in the number of her quotations. — All these precepts are meaningless, she says, if nothing is attributed to the human will. How badly that conjunction 'if' agrees with mere necessity!

I answer, if they are meaningless, it is your own fault that they are so, or rather, that they are nothing at all. You make this non-entity of them by asserting that nothing is ascribed to the human will, so long as you represent that Freewill cannot will good. And here, on the other hand, you represent that it can will all good — unless the same words are both hot and cold in the same instant. As you use them, they at once assert everything and deny everything. Truly I am at a loss to think why an author would be pleased to say the same thing so many times over, perpetually forgetting his thesis — unless perchance, through mistrust of his cause, he had a mind to gain the victory by the size of his book, or to wear out his adversary by making it tedious and burdensome to peruse.

By what sort of consequence, I would ask, does it follow that will and power must at once be present to the soul, as often as it is said, 'If you will,' 'if a man wills,' 'if you are willing,' Do we not most frequently denote impotency and impossibility by such expressions, rather than the contrary? As in these examples: 'If you would equal Virgil in singing, my

Maevius, you must sing other songs;' 'If you would surpass Cicero, my Scotus, you must exchange your subtleties for the most consummate eloquence;' 'If you would be compared with David, you must utter Psalms like his,' By these conditionals, it is plain that what is denoted are things which are impossible to attain by our own powers; while by a divine power all things are possible to us. Thus it is with the Scriptures also: such words declare what may be done in us by the power of God, and what we cannot do of ourselves.

Besides, if such things were said about actions that are absolutely impossible, such as those which even God would never at any time do by us, then they would be rightly called either cold or ridiculous, for being said to no purpose. But the truth is, these expressions are used not only to show the impotency of Freewill, which causes none of these things to be done by us, but they also intimate, at the same time, that all such things are about to be done, and are to be done (at some time or other), even though they are done by another's power (even God's). And this is only if we admit that in such words, there is some intimation that the things which are to be done, are possible. It is as if someone interpreted the words this way: 'If you are willing to keep the commandments,' that is, 'If at some time you possess a will to keep the commandments (though you would possess a will, not of yourself, but of God who gives it to whomever

He wills to give it), then they shall preserve you.'

Or to speak more freely, these verbs, particularly the conjunctive verbs, seem to be inserted this way on account of God's predestination also — as being that which we do not know — and to involve it. As if they meant to say, 'If you will,' 'If you are willing,' that is, 'If you are such in the sight of God, that He counts you worthy of this will to keep the commandments, then you shall be saved,' Each of these two things is couched under this trope: namely, that, on the one hand we can do nothing of ourselves; and on the other, whatever we do, God works it in us. I would speak this way to those who would not be content to have it said that only our impotency is expressed by these words, but who would maintain that they prove a certain power and ability to do those things which are enjoined. Thus, it would at once be true that we could do none of the things commanded, and could at the same time do all of them — if we were to apply impotency to our own powers, and power to the grace of SECT. 35. Erasmus' objection that precepts are given, and merit is ascribed to Freewill, considered. —

Erasmus inconsistent with himself.

Thirdly, Diatribe is affected by this consideration:

'Where there is such frequent mention of good and bad works,' she says, 'where there is mention of reward, I do not see how there can be a place for mere necessity. Neither nature, nor necessity, has merit.'

Nor do I truly understand how there can be a place for mere necessity; except that the 'approvable opinion' asserts mere necessity in saying that Freewill can will nothing good; but here, it attributes even merit to it.

Freewill has made such advances during the growth of this book, and Diatribe's disputation, that now she not only has desire and endeavour as hers (however, by a strength that is not her own); and she not only wills and does good; but she even merits eternal life. Because Christ says in the Mat 5.12, "Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for your reward is abundant in the heavens." Your reward; that is, Freewill's reward: for so Diatribe understands this text, making Christ and the Spirit to be nothing. For what need is there of Christ and the Spirit, if we have good works and merits through Freewill?

I mention this, so that we may see how common it is for men of excellent abilities to be prone to show a blindness in matters which are manifest to even a dull and uncultivated mind; and how weak an argument is drawn from human authority in divine things, where divine authority alone has

SECT. 36. New Testament precepts are addressed to the converted, not to those in Freewill.

Two distinct topics must be spoken to here: first, the precepts of the New Testament; and secondly, merit. I will dispatch each of these in few words, having spoken of them rather extensively on other occasions. The New Testament properly consists of promises and exhortations, just as the Old Testament properly consists of laws and threatenings.

For, in the New Testament, the Gospel is preached; which is nothing else but a discourse offering the Spirit, together with grace, for that remission of sins which has been obtained for us by the crucifixion of Christ: and all of this is done gratuitously, only because the mercy of God the Father befriends us, unworthy as we are, and deserving damnation as we do, rather than anything else. Then follow exhortations, to stir up those who are already justified, and have already obtained mercy, to strenuously bring forth the fruits of that freely bestowed righteousness and of the Spirit; for acting out love in performing good works; and for bearing the cross and all other tribulations of the world with good courage. This is the sum of the entire New Testament.

Diatribe abundantly shows how entirely ignorant she is of this matter, in not knowing how to make the least differentiation between the Old and New Testaments. For she sees almost nothing in either, except laws and precepts by which men are to be conformed to good manners. What new birth is — what renewal, regeneration, and the whole work of the Spirit are — she does not see at all. This is to my utter wonder and astonishment, that a man who has laboured so long and so studiously in the Scriptures, should be so perfectly ignorant of them.

So then, this saying, "Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in the heavens," squares just about as well with Freewill, as light agrees with darkness. For Christ does not exhort Freewill in this, but he exhorts his Apostles to bear the tribulations of the world. They were not only in a state above Freewill, already being partakers of grace, and also just persons; but they were even established in the ministry of the word; that is, in the highest station of grace. But we are engaged in discussing

Freewill, specifically as she subsists without grace. Freewill is instructed by laws and threatenings (that is, by the Old Testament) into the knowledge of herself, so that she may run to the promises that are set

SECT. 37. Merit and reward may consist with necessity.

But as to merit, or a reward being proposed, what is this but a sort of promise? This does not prove that we have any power — for nothing else is expressed by it except that if a man had done this or that thing, then he would have a reward. But our question is not how a reward, or what sort of a reward, will be rendered to a man; but whether we can do those things for which a reward is rendered. This was the thing to be proved.

Are these not ridiculous conclusions: The reward of the judge is proposed to all who are in the race; therefore all can run and obtain it? If Caesar conquers the Turk, then he will enjoy the kingdom of Syria: therefore

Caesar can and does conquer the Turk. If Freewill rules over sin, it shall be holy to the Lord; therefore Freewill is holy to the Lord. But I will say no more about these superlatively stupid and palpably absurd reasonings, except that it is most worthy of Freewill to be defended by such convoluted arguments.

Let me rather speak to this point: that 'necessity has neither merit, nor reward.' If we speak of a necessity of compulsion, the point is true. If we speak of a necessity of immutability, it is false. Who would give a reward, or impute merit, to an unwilling workman? But to those who wilfully do good or evil, even though they cannot change this will by their own power, there naturally and necessarily follows reward or punishment; as it is written, "You will render to every man according to his works." It naturally follows, if you are submerged in water, you will drown; if you swim out, you will save your life.

To be brief, in the matter of merit or reward, the inquiry is either about the worthiness, or about the consequence, of our actions.

If you look at worthiness, there is no such thing as merit or reward. For if Freewill can will nothing good of itself, and it only wills good through grace, who does not see that this will to do good, together with its merit or its reward, is of grace only? We are speaking, as you know, of Freewill that is separate from grace, and inquiring what power is proper to each.

Here again, Diatribe is at variance with herself in arguing for freedom of the will from merit. She is in the same condemnation with me whom she opposes, fighting equally against herself as against me, saying that there is merit, reward, and liberty. For she asserts here, as she does above, that Freewill can will nothing good, and has undertaken to prove the sort of Freewill that does will good.

If you look at the consequences of actions, there is nothing either good or bad, which does not have its reward. And we get into mistakes for this reason: that in speaking of merits and rewards, we stir useless considerations and questions about the worth of actions — which have none — when we ought to be debating only about their consequences.

For hell and the judgment of God await the wicked by a necessary consequence, even though they themselves neither desire, nor think of such a reward for their sins — indeed, even though they exceedingly detest and execrate it, as Peter says. In like manner, the kingdom awaits the godly, though they neither seek it, nor think of it themselves; being a possession prepared for them by their Father, not only before they were in existence, but even before the foundation of the world.

No, if the godly were doing good so that they might obtain the kingdom, they would never obtain it; they would instead belong to the community of the wicked who, with an evil and mercenary eye, "seek their own," even in God. But the sons of God do good through a gratuitous good pleasure; not seeking any reward, but simply seeking the glory of God, and aiming to do the will of God. They are prepared to do good, even though according to an impossible supposition: there is no such thing as either the kingdom or hell-fire. I think these things are quite sure from that single saying of Christ in Mat 25.34: "Come you blessed of my

Father, receive the kingdom, which has been prepared for you from the foundation of the world."

How do they earn that which even now is theirs, and which was prepared for them before they were born? So that we would speak more correctly if we said that the kingdom of God rather earns us for its possessors, than we earn it — thus placing merit where they place reward, and reward where they place merit. For the kingdom is not to be prepared, but it has been prepared; the children of the kingdom are to be prepared for it, and are not to prepare the kingdom. That is, the kingdom earns her children; the children do not earn the kingdom. Hell, in like manner, earns her children, and prepares them, rather than they prepare it — since Christ says, "Depart you cursed into everlasting fire, which has been prepared for the devil and his angels."

SECT. 38. Why there are promises and threatenings in Scripture.

Then, what do those declarations mean which promise the kingdom and threaten hell? What does that word 'reward' mean, being repeated so often throughout the Scriptures? "Your work has a reward," 1Cor 3.14 He says. "I am your exceeding great reward." Gen 15.1 Again; "Who renders to every man according to his works." Psa 62.12 And Paul in Rom 2.7 says, "To those who by the patience of good works seek for eternal life," and many similar sayings.

The answer is that all these sayings prove nothing but a consequence of reward, and by no means a worthiness of merit — those who truly do good, do it not through a servile and mercenary disposition to gain eternal life, but they still seek eternal life; that is, they are in the way by which they will arrive at and obtain eternal life.

So that, to seek eternal life, is to painfully strive, and to endeavour with urgent labour, because it tends to follow from a good life. Now, the Scriptures declare that these things will take place, and will follow from a good or evil life; in order that men may be instructed, warned, excited, or terrified. For as by the law, is the knowledge of sin, Rom 3.20 and the warning of our impotency, yet is it not inferred from this law that we have any power. Even so, we are warned and taught by those promises and threatenings, what follows from that sin and impotency of ours, which the law has pointed out to us — but nothing of worthiness is ascribed by them to our merit.

Therefore, as law words stand in place of instruction and illumination, to teach us what we ought to do and, as the next step, what we cannot do — so words of reward, while they intimate what is to happen, stand in place of exhortation and threatening, to stir up, comfort, and revive the godly.

This is that they may go on, persevere, and conquer in doing good, and enduring evil, lest they become weary or broken-hearted. Just as Paul exhorts his Corinthian converts, saying, "Quit yourselves like men,"

"knowing that your labour is not in vain in the Lord."

Thus God revives Abraham by saying, 'I am your exceeding great reward.'

It is just as if you cheered a person, by telling him that his works assuredly please God: it is the sort of consolation which the Scripture frequently uses. Nor is it a small degree of consolation for a man to know that he pleases God, even if nothing else followed from it — which is impossible, however.

SECT. 39. Reason objects to the account, but is answered 'such is the will of God.'

All that is said about hope and expectation must be referred to this consideration: that the things hoped for will certainly take place; although godly men do not hope because of the things themselves, or seek such benefits for their own sake. So again, ungodly men are terrified and cast down by words of threatening which announce a judgment to come, that they may cease and abstain from evil; that they may not be puffed up; and that they may not grow secure and insolent in their sins.

Now, if reason turned up her nose here and said, Why would God have these impressions made by his words, when no effect is produced by such words, and when the will cannot turn itself either way? Why does he not perform what he does, without taking notice of it in the word? Seeing that He can do all things without the word; and seeing that the will neither has more power, nor of itself performs more through hearing the word, if the Spirit is lacking to move the soul within. Nor would the will have less power, or perform less, though the word were silent, if the Spirit were granted — since it all depends on the power and work of the Holy Ghost.

My reply is that God has determined to give the Spirit by the word, and not without it, having us for his cooperators, to sound without, what he alone and by himself breathes within, just where he pleases, producing effects which he could no doubt accomplish without the word — but it is not his pleasure to do so.

And who are we, that we should demand the reason why God wills so? It is enough for us to know that God wills so; and it becomes us to reverence, to love, and to adore this will, putting a restraint on rash

Reason. Even Christ, in Matthew 11, assigns no other cause for the Gospel being hidden from the wise and revealed to babes, than it seemed good to the Father. Thus he might nourish us without bread; and He has, in point of fact, given us a power of being nourished without bread, as he says in Mat 4.4, "Man is not nourished by bread alone, but by the word of God." Still, it pleased him to nourish us inwardly by his word, through the means of bread; and that bread is fetched into us from without.

It stands good, therefore, that merit is not proved by reward — in the Scriptures, at least. And again, that Freewill is not proved by merit; much less such a Freewill as Diatribe has undertaken to prove: one which cannot will anything good, of itself.

For, if you were even to concede that there is such a thing as merit, and added those usual similes and consequences of Reason — such as, that commandments are given in vain; that reward is promised in vain; that threatenings are held forth in vain, unless there is Freewill — if anything is proved by these arguments, I say, it is that Freewill, of herself, can do everything. For, if she cannot do everything for herself, that consequence of reason retains its place. 'Therefore, it is vain to command, it is vain to promise, it is vain to hold out threatenings,' Thus Diatribe continually disputes against herself, while opposing me. The truth, meanwhile, is that God alone works both merit and reward in us, by his Spirit. But he announces and declares each of these to the whole world, by his outward word. This is in order that his own power and glory, and our impotency and ignominy, may be proclaimed even among the ungodly, the unbelieving, and the ignorant — even though none but the godly understand that word with the heart, and keep it faithfully; the rest despise it.

SECT. 40. Apology for not considering all his pretended texts separately — Absurd cavil from Mat 7.16.

And now, it would be too tiresome to repeat the several imperative verbs which Diatribe enumerates out of the New Testament; always appending her own consequences, pretending that all these expressions are vain, superfluous, meaningless, absurd, ridiculous, and nothing at all, unless the Will is free. I have already declared, to a high degree of nauseating repetition, what an absolute nothing is made out by such expressions as these. If they prove anything, they prove an entire Freewill.

Now, this is nothing but a complete overturning of Diatribe, who undertook to prove such a Freewill as can do nothing good, and serves sin; but really proves a Freewill which can do everything — so continually ignorant and forgetful is she of her own self. They are mere cavils then, when she argues thus:

'You shall know them by their fruits,' says the Lord: by fruits he means works. He calls these works ours: but they are not ours, if all things are performed by necessity.'

What! Are those possessions not most rightly called ours, which it is true, we have not made ourselves, but which we have received from others?

Why should those works not then be called ours, which God has given to us by the Spirit? Shall we not call Christ ours, because we have not made him, but only received him? On the other hand, if we say that we make all those things which are called ours, why then, we have made our own eyes for ourselves, we have made our own hands for ourselves, we have made our own feet for ourselves — unless we are forbidden to call our eyes, hands, and feet ours! Indeed, what do we have, which we have not received; as Paul says? 1Cor 4.7 Shall we say, then, that these possessions are either not ours, or they have been made by ourselves? But let it be, now, let it be that these fruits are called ours, because we have produced them — what then becomes of grace and the Spirit? For he does not say,

'by their fruits, which are in some very small degree and portion theirs, you shall know them.' These, rather, are the ridiculous, superfluous, vain, meaningless sayings — indeed, a parcel of foolish and odious cavils

— by which the sacred words of God are polluted and profaned.

SECT. 41. Luk 23.34 is against, not for Thus, too, that saying of Christ on the cross is sported with : "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do."

Here, when you expect a sentence that attaches Freewill to the testimony just adduced, she again takes herself to her consequences.

'How much more justly,' she says, 'would he have excused them by saying that they were those who did not have a free will, and could not do otherwise, even if they would!' And yet, that sort of Freewill which can will nothing good, though it is the sort of Freewill in question, is not proved by this consequence. Rather, it is that sort of Freewill which can do everything; the sort which no one contends for, and which everyone denies, except the Pelagians.

But now, when Christ expressly says that they know not what they do, does he not at the same time testify that they cannot will good? For, how can you will what you do not know? Surely there can be no desire for an unknown thing. What can be more stoutly affirmed against Freewill, than it is such a perfect nullity in itself, that it is not only incapable of willing good, but of knowing how much evil it is doing, and even what

'good' is. Is there any obscurity in any word here? 'They know not what they do." What remains in Scripture, which may not prove Freewill, by Diatribe's suggestion, when this most clear saying of Christ affirms the contrary to her? A man might just as easily say that Freewill is proved by that saying, "The earth was empty and void;" or, "God rested on the seventh day:" and the like. Then the Scriptures will be ambiguous and obscure indeed! These sayings would mean all things, and mean nothing, in the same moment. But such an audacious handling of the word of God argues for a mind that is signally contemptuous both towards God, and towards man — which deserves no patience at all.

SECT. 42. Joh 1.12 is all for grace.

So again, that saying in John 1.12, "To them he gave power to become the sons of God,' she takes in this way: 'How can power be given to them, that they should become the sons of God, if there is no liberty in our will?'

This passage, also, is a cudgel against Freewill, as is nearly the whole Gospel of John; yet this is adduced in support of it. See, I beg you, that John is not speaking of any work of man's, whether great or small; but of the actual renewal and transmutation of the old man, who is a son of the devil; into the new man, who is a son of God. This man is simply passive

(as they say), and does nothing, but is altogether a thing that is made. For John speaks of his being made: "to be made the sons of God." This is by a power freely given to us by God. It is not by a power of Freewill which is

But our Diatribe infers from this, that Freewill is of such a power as to make sons of God; or else she is prepared to conclude that this saying of John is ridiculous and meaningless. But who has ever extolled Freewill to such a height, as to give it the power of making sons of God — especially such a Freewill as can will nothing good. And this is the one which Diatribe has taken up to prove. But let this pass with the rest of those consequences, so often repeated, by which, if anything is proved, it is nothing but what Diatribe denies: namely, that Freewill can do everything. What John means is this: that by Christ's coming into the world, a power is given to all men through the Gospel (that Gospel by which grace is offered, and not by which work is demanded), which is magnificent in the extreme — even that power of becoming the sons of God, if they are willing to believe!

But this 'being willing,' this 'believing in his name,' — because it is a thing which Freewill never knew, and never thought of before, it is a thing which she is yet much further from being able to attain to, by her own powers. For how could reason imagine that faith in Jesus, the son of God and of man, is necessary, when she does not yet comprehend, nor can she believe, that there exists a person who is at the same time both God and man — even if the whole creation were to proclaim it with an audible voice. On the contrary, she is all the more offended by such preaching, as Paul testifies in 1Cor 1.18, 23. That is how far she is from being either willing or able to believe.

John therefore proclaims those riches of the kingdom of God, which are offered to the world by the Gospel, not by the virtues of Freewill. This intimates, at the same time, how few there are who receive them because, truly, Freewill resists the proposal. Through the dominion which Satan has over her, her power is nothing but to spurn the offer of grace, and of that Spirit who would fulfil the law.

So exquisite is the force of her desire and endeavour to fulfil the law! But hereafter I will show more at large what a thunderbolt this text of John's is against Freewill. Meanwhile, I am not a little indignant that passages which are so clear in their meaning, and so powerful in their opposition to Freewill, should be cited by Diatribe in her favour. Her dullness is such that she sees no difference between law words and words of promise. For having first of all established Freewill by law testimonies, most ridiculously, she then reaches the height of absurdity by confirming it with words of promise. This absurdity, however, is easily explained by considering with what an averse and contemptuous mind

Diatribe engages in the discussion. To her, it is no matter whether grace stands or falls; whether Freewill is laid prostrate or maintains her seat — if only she may prove herself the humble servant of a conclave of tyrants, by tittering a number of vain words to excite disgust against our cause.

SECT. 43. Objections from Paul summarily dispatched.

After this we come to Paul also, the most determined enemy to Freewill, who is nevertheless compelled to establish Freewill by what he says in Rom 2.4, "Or do you despise the riches of his goodness and patience and longsuffering? Or do you not know that his goodness leads you to repentance?" How can contempt for the commandment be imputed, where the will is not free? How can God invite us to repentance, when he is the author of impenitence? How can it be that damnation is just, when the judge constrains us to the crime?

I answer, let Diatribe look to these questions, for what are they to me?

She has told us in her approvable opinion, that Freewill cannot will good, which compels us necessarily into the service of sin. How is it, indeed, that contempt of the commandment is imputed to her if she cannot will good, and if she has no liberty, but is under necessary bondage to sin?

How is it that God invites us to repentance, when he is the author of man's impenitence — in that God deserts him or does not confer grace upon him, when man cannot will good if left alone? How is it that the damnation is just when the judge, by withdrawing his help, makes it unavoidable that the ungodly man is left to do wickedly, since he can do nothing else by his own power?

All these sayings recoil on the head of Diatribe; or if they prove anything, they prove (what I have said) that Freewill can do everything, in contradiction to what she has said herself, and everybody else. These consequences of reason annoy Diatribe throughout all her Scripture quotations. Is it not truly ridiculous and meaningless, to attack and exact in such vehement language, if there is not one present who can fulfil the demand? All the while, the Apostle has for his object, to lead ungodly and proud men to the knowledge of themselves, and of their own impotency, by means of these threatenings, so that having humbled them by the knowledge of sin, he may prepare them for grace.

SECT. 44. Wickliff's confession is confessed.

And why do I need to recount, one by one, all the texts which are adduced from Paul's writings, when she but collects a number of imperative or conjunctive verbs, or those expressions which Paul confessed for use in exhorting Christians to the fruits of faith? Because, by adding her own consequences, Diatribe imagines a Freewill of such and so great a virtue that, without grace, it can do everything which Paul the exhorter prescribes. Christians, however, are not led by Freewill, but by the Spirit of God. (Rom 8.14.) Now, to be led is not to lead ourselves, but to be driven along, just as the saw or the hatchet is driven along by the carpenter.

And here, lest anyone doubt that Luther said such "absurd" things, Diatribe recites Wickliff's words, which I deliberately own, avowing his article as I do: that 'all things are done by necessity;' that is, by the unchangeable will of God; 'and our will, though not indeed compelled to do evil, is incapable of doing any good by its own power'.

He was falsely condemned by the Council of Constance (or rather by conspiracy and sedition). Indeed, even Diatribe herself defends him in conjunction with me, asserting as she does, that Freewill can will nothing good by its own powers, and that it serves sin necessarily — though, in the course of her proof, she establishes the direct contrary.