You see, then, that Diatribe and her friends do not judge according to equity in this cause, but according to whether their interest is affected. If she regarded only equity, she would argue with God for crowning the unworthy, just as much as she does for condemning the undeserving. 585
She would also commend and extol God for condemning the undeserving, just as much as she does for saving the unworthy. There is equal unfairness in each case if you refer the matter to our own judgment — unless it is not equally unrighteous to commend Cain for his murder and make him a king, as it would be to cast innocent Abel into prison or put him to death. When it is found, then, that reason commends God for saving the unworthy, but finds fault with him for condemning the undeserving, she stands convicted of not commending God as God, but as one who promotes her own personal interest. In other words, she looks at self and her own things in God, and commends them; not at God and the things of God. The truth is, however, that if you are pleased with God for crowning the unworthy, then you should not be displeased with him for condemning the undeserving. If he is just in the one case, then why not in the other? In the former case, he scatters favour and pity upon the unworthy; in the latter, he scatters wrath and severity upon the undeserving. In both cases, it is excessive and unrighteous according to man’s judgment, but it is just and true according to His own. For it is incomprehensible at present, how it is just that He crowns the unworthy — but we will see how, when we come to that place where He will no longer be believed, but we will behold Him with open face.2Cor 3.18 So again, it is incomprehensible at present how it is just that he condemns the undeserving; but we receive it as a matter of faith, until the Son of man is revealed. 586
SECT. 34. Scripture must be understood with qualifications.
Diatribe, however, is sorely displeased with this simile of the potter and the clay, and not a little indignant to be so hunted by it. She is reduced at length to the extremity of producing different passages from Scripture, some of which seem to ascribe all to man, and some, all to grace. And then she contends in her passion, that both these should be understood with a sober explanation, 587 and are not to be taken strictly. Otherwise, if we urge this simile, she in turn is prepared to urge us with those imperative and conjunctive texts, especially with this one of Paul’s: “If a man purges himself from these.” Here she represents Paul as contradicting himself, and she attributes all to man, unless a sober explanation comes to his aid. ‘If, then, an explanation of the text is allowed here, so as to leave room for grace, then why may not the simile of the potter also allow a qualification, so as to leave room for Freewill?’
I answer that it is no matter to me whether you take the words in a simple sense, or in a double sense, or in a hundred senses. 588 What I say is that you gain nothing, and prove nothing (of what you seek to gain and prove), by this “sober” explanation. It ought to be proved by it, that Freewill can will nothing good.
But in this place, “If a man purges himself from these,” the form of expression being conjunctive, neither anything, nor nothing is proved, for Paul is only exhorting. Or if you add Diatribe’s consequence, and say that he exhorts in vain if man cannot cleanse himself, then it is proved that Freewill can do everything without grace. And so, Diatribe disproves herself.
I still wait for some passage of Scripture therefore, which teaches this explanation; I do not give credit to those who make it up out of their own heads. I deny that any passage is found which ascribes all to man. I also deny that Paul is at variance with himself when he says, “If a man cleanses himself from these.” I affirm that the variance in Paul is no less a fiction, than the explanation which she extorts from it is a laboured invention; and neither of them is demonstrated. This I indeed confess: that if it is lawful to expand the Scriptures with these consequences and appendages of Diatribe’s — such as when she says that injunctions are vain if we do not have the power to fulfil them — then Paul is really at variance with himself, and all of Scripture with him; because then the Scripture is made different from what it was before. Then she would also prove that Freewill can do everything. But what wonder is it if, in that case, what she says elsewhere is also at variance with her statement ‘that God is the sole doer of everything?’ But this Scripture, so added to, is not only at war with us, but also with Diatribe herself, who has laid it down that Freewill can will nothing good. Let her therefore deliver herself first of all, and say how these two things agree with Paul: Freewill can will nothing good; and ‘if a man cleanses himself, he can therefore cleanse himself, or else it is said in vain.’ You see, therefore, that Diatribe is plagued to death, and is overcome by this simile of the potter, and that all her effort is to elude the force of it.
Meanwhile, she is not heeding how much her interpretation injures the cause which she has undertaken to defend, and how she is confuting and making a jest of herself. 589
SECT. 35. Luther has always maintained the perfect consistency of Scripture — illustrates it in affirmed opposites.
On the contrary, as I said before, I have never been ambitious about interpretations, nor have I ever spoken in this manner: “extend the hand;” that is, ‘grace shall extend it.’ 590 These are Diatribe’s fictions about me, said to benefit her own cause. My affirmation has always been that there is no variance in the words of Scripture, and no need for an ‘explanation’ to untie a knot. It is the assertors of Freewill who make knots where there are none, 591 and dream up discrepancies for themselves. For example; those two sayings, “If a man cleanses himself,” and “God works all in all,” are in no way opposite. Nor is it necessary (to untie a knot) to say, God does something, and man does something. The former of these texts is a conjunctive sentence, which neither affirms nor denies any work or power in man, but it prescribes what work or power there ought to be in a man. There is nothing figurative here, nothing which needs explanation: the words are simple, the sense is simple, if you do not add consequences and corruptives in the manner of Diatribe. Then, indeed, the sense would become unsound. But whose fault would that be? Not the text’s, but its corrupter’s.
The latter text, “God works all in all,” is an indicative sentence, affirming that all work, all power is God’s. In what respect, then, do two places disagree, of which one has nothing to do with the power of man, and the other ascribes all to God?
Rather, do they not most perfectly agree with each other? But Diatribe is so plunged over head and ears, choked and sobbed, 592 by entertaining this carnal thought, ‘that it is vain to command impossibilities,’ that she is not able to restrain herself. Whenever she hears an imperative or conjunctive verb, she at once appends her own indicative consequences to it, saying, ‘There is something commanded, therefore we can do it, otherwise it would have been folly to command it.’ Upon this, she sallies forth and boasts of her victories everywhere, as though she had demonstrated that those consequences, together with her own imagination, were as much a settled thing, as divine authority. Upon this, she does not hesitate to pronounce that in some passages of Scripture, everything is ascribed to man; or that there is therefore a discrepancy, a repugnancy in those places, which must be obviated by an explanation. She does not see that all this is the figment of her own brain, without a single letter of Scripture to confirm it — that besides this, it is a figment of such a kind that, if admitted, it would confute no one more stoutly than herself. For would she not prove by it (if she proves anything), that Freewill can do everything? This is the express contrary to what she has undertaken to prove.
SECT. 36. In merit and reward, etc., she contradicts herself — proves an absurdity, and cannot tell what she means to prove. But in fact, she proves nothing — Paul stands.
It is upon the same principle that she so often repeats the words,
‘If man does nothing, there is no room for
