§ 18. THE FREE-WILL CONTROVERSY. 431
hidden will, which means to save only some, and to leave the rest to deserved perdition. In this way he escapes the force of such passages as Ezek. 18: 28: 83:11; 1 Tim. 2: 4, urged by Erasmus, that God does not wish the death but the salvation of the sinner (namely, according to his revealed will only).2. But this distinction puts a contradiction in God, which is impossible and intolerable.
If we except the peculiar way of statement and illustra- tion, Luther’s view is substantially that of St. Augustin, whom Erasmus, with all due reverence for the great man, represents as teaching, ‘God works in us good and evil, and crowns his good works in us, and punishes his bad works in us.” The positive part is unobjectionable: God is the author and rewarder of all that is good; but the negative part is the great stumbling-block. How can God in justice command us to walk when we are lame, and punish us for not walking? The theory presupposes, of course, the apostasy and condemnation of the whole human race, on the ground of its unconscious or impersonal pre-existence and participation in the sin and guilt of Adam.
All the Reformers were originally Augustinians, that is, believers in the total depravity of man’s nature, and the absolute sovereignty of God’s grace. They had, like St. Paul and St. Augustin, passed through a terrible conflict with sin, and learned to feel in their hearts, what ordinary Christians profess with their lips, that they were justly condemned, and saved only by the merits of Christ. They were men of intense experience and conviction of their own sinfulness and of God’s mercifulness; and if they saw others perish in unbelief, it was not because they were worse, but because of the inscrutable will of God, who gives to some, and withholds
1 «(ὁ Multa facit Deus que verbo suo non ostendit nobis, multa quoque vult, que verbo suo non ostendit 8686 velle. Sic non vult mortem peccatoris, verbo scilicet, vult autem illam voluntate illa imperscrutabili.”? Vol. VIL. p. 222.
ἘΠῚ. ed. Op. Lat. The scholastic divines made a similar distinction between the voluntas signi and the voluntas beneplaciti.
432 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1580.
from others, the gift of saving faith. Those champions of freedom taught the slavery of the will in all things pertaining to spiritual righteousness. They drew their moral strength from grace alone. They feared God, and nothing else. Their very fear of God made them fearless of men. The same may be said of the French Huguenots and the English Puritans. Luther stated this theory in stronger terms than Augustin or even Calvin; and he never retracted it, —as is often asserted, — but even twelve years later he pronounced his book against Erasmus one of his very best.'. Melanchthon, no doubt in part under the influence of this controversy, abandoned his early predestinarianism as a Stoic error (1535), and adopted the synergistic theory. Luther allowed this change without adopting it himself, and abstained from further discussion of these mysteries. The Formula of Concord re-asserted in the strongest terms Luther’s doctrine of the slavery of the human will, but weakened his doctrine of predestination, and assumed a middle ground between Augustinianism and semi-Pelagianism or synergism.? In like manner the Roman Catholic Church, while retaining the greatest reverence for St. Augustin and indorsing his anthropology, never sanctioned his views on total depravity and unconditional predestination, but condemned them, indirectly, in the Jansenists.®
1 In 1537 he wrote to Capito, ‘* Nullum agnosco meum justum librum nisi forte De Servo Arbitrio et Catechismum.’’ De Wette, V. 70. In the Articles of Smalkald he again denied the freedom of the will as a scholastic error; and in his last work, the Commentary on Genesis (ch. 6 : 6, and ch. 26), he re-affirmed the distinction of the secret and revealed will of God, which we are unable to harmonize, but for this reason he deems it safest to adhere to the revealed will and to avoid speculations on the impenetrable mysteries of the hidden will. ‘‘ Melius et tutius est consistere ad presepe Christi hominis ; plurimum enim periculi in eo est, si in illos labyrinthos divinitatis te involvas.’’ On Gen. 6: 6, in the Erl. ed. of Exeg. Opera, II. 170.
2 Form. Conc., Art. II. and XI. SeeSchaff, Creeds of Christendom, I. 518 sq.
8 Tbid., I. 102 sqq. Among the condemned propositions of Quesnel are these: ‘‘The grace of Christ is necessary for every good work; without it nothing can be done.”” ‘‘ The will of man, before conversion by prevenient grace, is capable of all evil and incapable of good.”’