All is in vain: to preserve his gold, to show his gratitude for what he has already received, and (unless he is barbarously treated) to earn more, his pledges must now be redeemed, and out comes the Diatribe. 47
He vapours much about the great danger of publishing it:
‘No printer at Basil would dare to undertake his or any work which contained a word against Luther.’
He tells Henry VI (to whom he had sent a part of the manuscript for his approbation)
‘The die is cast; my little book on Freewill is published: a bold deed, believe me, if the situation of Germany at this time is considered. I expect to be pelted; but I will console myself with the example of your majesty, who has not escaped their outrages.’
Conscience speaks out, when he says to Wolsey,
‘I have not chosen to dedicate this work to anyone, least my calumniators should instantly say that in this business I had been hired to please the great. Otherwise, I would have inscribed it to you, or to the Pope.’
His ruling passion speaks out, when he declares the mighty consequences which he expected from his publication. He writes to Tunstall:
‘The little book is out; and though written with the greatest moderation, it will, if I am not mistaken, excite most prodigious commotions. Already pamphlets fly at my head.’
Such was the birth of the Diatribe; the offspring of a peevish, dissatisfied, vain man who had tampered with both parties, and pleased neither, but was now sufficiently determined which side he would be of; yet he still aimed to preserve his favourite character of moderation. It is the work of a great scholar, but not of a deep thinker; of ‘one who had scoured the surface of his question, but by no means penetrated into its substance;’ of one who knew what is in the Bible, but did not understand the Bible.
It is imposing, but not solid; objurgatory 48 and commendative; but neither disproving what he blamed, nor establishing or even defining what he approved. Yet this is a performance such as, not only careless persons, but half the tribe of professedly serious gospellers will defend and maintain in substance, in opposition to Luther’s. Indeed, many who call and account themselves Calvinists, or Calvinistic (I am by no means an advocate for names — it is character and principle, not sect or party, that I would uphold), are in heart and understanding — if not avowedly — Freewillers. They oppose (as they seek to do) the testimony of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, with the deductions of blinded human reason, and make a God for themselves by blending shreds and patches of Scripture with shreds and patches of their own imagination. They do this instead of simply studying, lying at the feet of, and inhabiting, that living and true One, whom the Bible has been written and published to make known. I subscribe my testimony to that of Luther’s: that the Diatribe is tedious, distinctive, illusory, false and pernicious.
Luther hesitated to answer it; but at length he consented to do so, for reasons which he declares in the introduction of his letter: if he was to answer such a production of such a man upon such a subject, why, it must be done with all his might, just as he has done it. He that would see Luther, therefore, may behold him here.
Erasmus replied in two distinct treatises under the name of Hyperaspistes, ‘defender as with a shield.’ The first, as he tells us, was written in ten days, so that it might be ready for the ensuing Frankfort fair (the great mart for literature as well as commerce, in that day). It was a passionate and hasty effusion, in which he did not give himself time to think. The second was a very long and highly-laboured performance, in which he was ‘completely unfettered, and completely in earnest; and if he had been able, he would without the least mercy, have trampled on Luther and ground him to powder.’ ‘Diis aliter visun.’ 49
‘This second book is very long and very tedious; but the tediousness of which every reader must complain, is not owing so much to the length of the performance, as to the confusion which pervades it throughout. The writer is kept sufficiently alive, amidst great prolixity,50 by the unceasing irritation of his hostility and resentment; but the reader is fatigued and bewildered by being led through obscure paths, one after another, and never arriving at any distinct and satisfactory conclusion. A close attention of the mind to a long series of confused and jumbled propositions, wearies the intellect as infallibly as a continued exertion in looking at difficult to distinguish objects, exhausts the powers of the most perfect organs of vision.’
Luther did not rejoin this twofold reply. He well knew that Erasmus was fighting for victory, not for truth, and he had better things to do than write books merely to repeat unanswered arguments. There was nothing of argument in the Hyperaspistes, which had not been answered in his Bondage of the Will; even as there was nothing in the Diatribe, which had not been in substance advanced and confuted many times before. The Letter, or Treatise, which is now presented to the public, must therefore be considered as containing Luther’s full, final, and as he deemed it, unrefuted and irrefragable 51 judgment on the state of the human will.
According to Erasmus, that state is a state of liberty; according to Luther, it is a state of bondage. Such is the subject and position brought into debate by Erasmus, and accepted as matter of challenge by Luther.
The accurate Locke, whose name I would ever recite with veneration and gratitude, has shown that the question is improperly stated. He says that the will, in substance, is but a power of the human mind or of the man; freedom is also a power of the man.
Therefore, to ask whether the will is free, is to ask whether one power of the man possesses another power of the man. This is like asking whether his sleep is swift, or his virtue is square — liberty is as little applicable to the will, as swift motion is applicable to sleep, or squareness to virtue. The proper question is, not whether man’s will is free, but whether man is free. And Locke determines that man is free, in so far (and only so far) as he can by the direction or choice of his mind, prefer the existence of any action, to the non-existence of that action; and vice-versa, to make it exist or not exist. Liberty is a power to act, or not to act, as we choose or will.
If, however, this improper question is still urged, whether the will is free, it must be changed into this form: is man free to will? That is, does man have liberty in the exercise of his will? Now, this must respect either the act of exercising his will; or the result of that exercise, which is the thing chosen. As to the former (the act), he determines that, in most cases, man does not have liberty. For once any action that is in his power, is proposed to his thoughts, as to be presently done, he must will. In the latter (the result), Locke determines that man cannot help but have liberty: he wills what he wills, and is pleased with what he is pleased with. To question this, is to suppose that one will determines the acts of another will, and that another will determines that; and so on, in infinitum. 52 In this latter assertion, Luther, it must be remarked, is as explicit as Locke, expressly maintaining that a compelled will is a contradiction in terms, and should be called Noluntas, rather than Voluntas: non-will, rather than will. (See Part i. Sect. xxiv., p. 69)
The schoolmen, from whom Luther and Erasmus took this question (Erasmus was first on this occasion, but Luther had taken it up before), made a distinction between the absolute faculty of the will, and that faculty as exercised, or in action.
Their question was not, an sit libera voluntas? but, an sit liberum arbitrium? This, in fact, is a distinction without a difference: because, what is the subject matter about which they were disputing? It is not a dormant faculty, surely, but a faculty such as it is when exercised; for how else can its nature and properties be ascertained? Luther is as perceptive as Locke himself here. Erasmus, in his definition of Freewill, calls it that power of the human will by which a man is able to turn himself to those things which pertain to his salvation, or to turn himself away from them: in reality, meaning to interpose a something between the will and its actings. Luther, when canvassing this definition, denies that there can be any such tertium quid,53 and uses a language so very like Locke’s, that it might well draw from his historian the remark,
‘Luther, with as much acuteness as if he had studied Mr. Locke’s famous chapter on power, replies etc..’
‘But, what is meant by this same power “applying itself and turning away itself,” unless it is this very willing and refusing, this very choosing and despising, this very approving and rejecting; in short, unless it is the will performing its very office; I do not
