SECT. 55. Luther ends his defense of his own texts.
PART V. FREEWILL PROVED TO BE A LIE.
SECTION 1. How Luther proposes to conduct the fight.
SECT. 2. Rom 1.18 pronounces sentence upon Freewill.
SECT. 3. A published Gospel proves lack of knowledge in the natural man, as well as lack of power.
SECT. 4. Experience confirms Paul’s argument. Freewill neither conceives the truth, nor can endure it.
SECT. 5. Paul expressly names the greatest of the Greeks, and afterwards condemns the Jews indiscriminately.
SECT.6. Paul’s epilogue establishes his meaning.
SECT. 7. Paul is justified in his quotations.
SECT. 8. The Prophet’s condemnation includes power, as well as act.
SECT. 9. Paul’s big words in Rom 3.19-20 are insisted upon.
SECT. 10. Evasion that it is the ceremonial law of which Paul speaks.
SECT. 11. Paul’s meaning is, ‘works of the law, done in the flesh, condemn.’
SECT. 12. All the law does is to show sin.
SECT. 13. Confirmed by Gal 3.19 and Rom 5.20.
SECT. 14. Rom 3.21-25 contains many thunderbolts against Freewill.
First thunderbolt.
SECT. 15.
Second thunderbolt.
SECT. 16.
Third thunderbolt.
Fourth thunderbolt.
Fifth thunderbolt.
SECT. 17. Sophists are worse than the Pelagians.
SECT. 18. The Fathers overlooked Paul.
SECT. 19. Paul’s citation of the example of Abraham searched and applied.
SECT. 20. Luther omits much which he might insist upon.
SECT. 21. Luther’s own view of Paul.
SECT. 22. Paul’s crown.
SECT. 23. Grace exemplified in Jews being rejected, Gentiles called.
SECT. 24. John a devourer.
SECT. 25. John the Baptist’s testimony.
SECT. 26. Nicodemus’ case.
SECT. 27. John 14 forestalled. Way, truth, etc. are exclusive.
SECT. 28. John 3.18, 36.
SECT. 29. John 6.44.
SECT. 30. John 16.9.
SECT. 31. Omits to argue from the conflict between flesh and spirit, because no attempt has yet been made to repel what he has said about it.
SECT. 32. Difficulty stated and exposed.
SECT. 33. Difficulty Reproved and palliated by example.
SECT. 34. Sum of the argument.
Conclusion
Endnotes
MARTIN LUTHER
ON THE BONDAGE OF THE WILL;
TO THE VENERABLE MISTER
ERASMUS OF ROTTERDAM,
1525.
FAITHFULLY TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL LATIN;
BY EDWARD THOMAS VAUGHAN, M.A.
VICAR OF ST. MARTIN S, LEICESTER, RECTOR OF FOSTON, LEICESTERSHIRE, AND SOMETIME FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
WITH A PREFACE AND NOTES.
Rev. Vaughan’s comments are drawn largely from Joseph Milner’s History of the Church of Christ (London, 1812).
Preface
A Biographical Sketch of Martin Luther
I DEEM it expedient to put the reader in possession of the circumstances under which this work was written; for which purpose it is necessary that I premise a rapid sketch of Luther’s history, in its connection with Protestantism.
Martin Luther was born in the year 1483, at Isleben, in Saxony. His father, who had worked in the mines of Mansfield, afterwards became a proprietor in them. This enabled him to educate his son, not only with a pious father’s care, but with a rich father’s liberality. After furnishing him with the elements in some inferior schools, he sent him at an early age to the University of Erfurth: where he made considerable proficiency in classical learning, eloquence, and philosophy, and commenced Master of Arts at the age of twenty. His parents had destined him for the bar; but after devoting himself diligently to the study of the civil law for some time, he forsook it abruptly, and shut himself up in a convent at Erfurth.
Here he became remarkable for his diligence, self-mortification and conscientiousness, occasionally suffering great agitation of mind from an ignorant fear of God. Habitually sad, and at intervals overwhelmed with paroxysms of mental agony, he consulted his vicar-general Staupitius. He comforted Luther by suggesting that he did not know how useful and necessary this trial might be to him:
‘God does not thus exercise you for nothing,’ he said. ‘You will one day see that he will employ you as his servant for great purposes.’
‘The event,’ adds the historian,1 ‘gave ample honour to the sagacity of Staupitius, and it is very evident that a deep and solid conviction of sin, leading the mind to the search of Scripture-truth, and the investigation of the way of peace, was the mainspring of Luther’s whole conduct afterward. And indeed, this view of our reformer’s state of mind furnishes the only key to the discovery of the real motives by which he was influenced in his public transactions.’
It was not till the second year of his residence in the monastery, that he accidentally met with a Latin Bible in the library, when for the first time he discovered that large portions of the Scriptures were withheld from the people. Being sick this same year, he was greatly comforted by an elder brother of the convent, who directed his attention to that precious article of our creed, ‘I believe in the remission of sins.’ Staupitius, he afterwards remarked, had spoken to him as with the voice of an angel, when he taught him that ‘true repentance begins with the love of righteousness and of God;’ but the old monk led him up to the source of this love. There may be, there is, a breathing after righteousness and a feeling after God, which prepare the way for this love; but there can be no real righteousness worked, nor real love felt of it and of God, till we have the consciousness of his forgiveness. His aged adviser represented to him, that this article implied not merely a GENERAL BELIEF — for the devils, he remarked, had a faith of that sort — but that it was the command of God, that each particular person should apply this doctrine of the remission of sins to his own particular case; and he referred him for the proof of what he said, to Bernard, Augustine, and St. Paul. With incredible ardour, Luther now gave himself up to the study of the Scriptures, and of Augustine’s works. Afterwards, he read other divines, but he stuck close to Augustine and held by him, as we find, to his last hour.
In the year 1507, Luther received holy orders; and the next year, he was called to the Professorship of Divinity at Wittemberg, through the recommendation of his friend Staupitius. Thereby he gave Luther an opportunity to verify his own forebodings concerning him. Here arose his connection with the elector Frederic of Saxony, which was so serviceable to him in all his after-conflicts. Frederic was tenderly anxious for the credit and success of his infant seminary; and Luther more than fulfilled his expectations, both as a teacher of philosophy and as a public minister. ‘Eloquent by nature, and powerful in moving the affections, acquainted also in a very uncommon manner with the elegancies and energy of his native tongue, he soon became the wonder of his age.’
In 1510, he was dispatched to Rome on some important business of his order. He performed this so well as to receive the distinction of a doctor’s degree upon his return. While at Rome, he had opportunities to notice the spirit with which religious worship was conducted there — its pomp, hurriedness and politicality. He was thankful to return once more to his convent, where he might pray deliberately and fervently without being ridiculed. He now entered upon a public exposition of the Psalms and Paul’s Epistle to the Romans; he studied Greek and Hebrew with great diligence. He improved his taste and enlarged his erudition, by availing himself of the philological labours of Erasmus (to which he always owned that he had been greatly indebted). He rejected the corruptive yoke of Aristotle and the Schoolmen, and did not rest, like the satirist who had given him a taste for pulling down in confusion, but sought and found his peace in erecting a scriptural theology upon the ruins of heathenized Christianity. The true light beamed very gradually upon his mind: from suspecting error, he became convinced that it was there. Constrained to reject error, he was forced step by step into truth.
He was thus employed with great contention of mind, in studying, ruminating, teaching and preaching. Once he had been favoured with some particular advantages 2 for ascertaining the real state of religion — both among clergy and laity in his own country — his attention was in a way compelled to the subject of INDULGENCES. He had not taken it up as a speculation; he did not know the real nature, grounds, ingredients, or ramifications of the evil. As a confessor, he had to deal with acknowledgments of sin; as a priest, he was to dictate penances. The penitents refused to comply, because they had dispensations in their pockets. What a chef-d’oeuvre 3 of Satan’s was here! It is not “Sin no more, lest a worse thing happen to you;” but sin as you wish, if you can pay for it.’ Luther would not absolve. The brass-browed Tetzel stormed, and ordered his pile of wood to be lighted that he might strike terror into all who should dare to think of being heretics. At present, Luther only said with great mildness from the pulpit, that ‘the people might be better employed, than in running from place to place to procure INDULGENCES.’ 4
He was sure it was wrong; he would try to check it; he would try with canonical regularity, applying to arch bishop and bishop for redress. He was so ignorant of the principals, subordinates, and sub-subordinates in the traffic, that he called upon his own archbishop vender to stop the trade!
See how God works. Ambition, vanity, and extravagance are made the instrument of developing the abominations of the Popedom, so that God may develop himself by his dealings with it. The gorgeous temple, whose foundations had previously been laid to the wonderment of man, not to the praise and worship of God, must continue to be built — though not one jot may be subtracted
