alleged, where only one is necessary.
[←149]
Quo tandem perveniat. The contrast is between that direct going to God of the truly humbled sinner; and the circuitous, procrastinative, self-centered expectations of the man who does not yet know the whole of his lostness and impotency.
[←150]
Nihil eligit. In direct contrast with the ‘sibi praesumit, sperat, optat’ of the former sentence; he does not desire or expect any particular combination of time and place, in which he may perform some great work for himself; but lies passive in the hands of God, leaving it to God even to choose for him. The expression reminds us of St. Paul’s language, under other circumstances, which was probably in Luther’s mind; “yet what I shall choose I know not.” (Phi 1.22)
[←151]
Cognoscant. ‘Nosco, vel bene nosco;’ ‘to know a person or thing not known before; as opposed to ‘agnosco.’
[←152]
Hackneyed: made too familiar by overuse and repetition.
[←153]
Necessariò damnabiles. We were so created, have been so generated and brought out into manifest existence, are so constituted and so situated, that we cannot choose but be just objects of God’s eternal damnation. This necessity is not blind Fate, but arises out of the appointments, arrangements, and operations of God’s counselled will.
[←154]
Fides vitae. Luther has some allusion possibly to Job 13.15, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” Faith of eternal life; the belief that he shall possess that life; is exercised by the dying man, in the moment when God is killing him. What! He gives you life, who is now killing you? Yes; so faith speaks. Even so, these apparent contradictions to the justice and other perfections of God, kill faith; but it is exercised in the midst of this death. A fine thought! But it will be seen elsewhere, I trust, that Luther misconceives and overstates this difficulty, through not seeing far enough into the counsel and actings of God. There is manifestly no injustice in the divine procedure when that procedure is viewed in its real nature and circumstances, as revealed. Nor are we without a manifested end, which the spiritual mind entirely approves and rejoices in, for that severity which is so hateful to carnal man. But it requires great depth, as-well as distinctness of vision, to see so as to be truly and indeed satisfied with this mystery of God, by which He is making himself known.
[←155]
Suspicione veritatis. Interdum suspicio est ‘opinio,’ ‘cogitatio’, ‘conjectura,’ ‘levis cognitio:’ a sort of ‘surmise’ in that they may be true.
[←156]
Noluntas. ‘The negation of will;’ a state supposed, which is inconsistent with the very existence of the faculty: yet this is what the opponents of ‘necessity’ would charge its asserters with maintaining; instead of that constrained but freely-acted obedience which is essential to the reality of God’s being God, and man being his moral creature.
[←157]
Our authorized version gives another turn to this passage, by dividing the verses differently. But the original text is, ‘I am foolish, and I did not know that I was behemoth before you: and I am always with you, you hold in your hand my right hand.”
[←158]
Luther does not really mean what his words might seem to imply, that God and Satan are co-equal rivals for the throne of man’s will. Hereafter, it will be found that he firmly and explicitly maintains the universal and minute sovereignty of God, as the doer of all things. His object here is to show the governance under which man’s will is; that it is under the power and control of the devil, unless and until the Holy Ghost assumes the empire of it: when it is still a subject, though the subject of another, and that is a freedom-giving master. The truth is, however, that God has never given Freewill (if by Freewill is meant an uncontrolled will) to any creature. Man, in his creation state, had the power of choosing and refusing, just as he has now; and the difference between his then state and his now state, consisted in his knowing nothing but good; and till the moment of trial, having no temptation to choose anything but good. When that temptation was, for the first time, presented to him, we know how he met it and the result was a corrupted faculty, which Satan rides as his packhorse. But both his seat and his riding are of the gift, and according to the will, of God; even as his dispossession is when, as and in whom God wills; not a moment sooner or later. Yet all this agency of God in no way contradicts the reality of a will in man; God’s universal and minute government consisting in his setting, or rather procuring to be set, before this faculty, such considerations as will lead the free agent possessor of it to choose just what God would have him choose.
[←159]
Contra me turn assent, turn quaerit. Much of Erasmus’ argument consisted of dubitative remark; hinting a fault or objection, rather than boldly stating it; and proposing questions, rather than affirming certainties.
[←160]
Quid ipsa faciet. This question is no less than the death blow to Freewill, however modest may be the pretensions made for her. A false candour and a ruinous forbearance ask why we should attempt to separate what run so closely and so harmoniously together: God’s grace and man’s exertion? Goodwill to man, and zeal for God, demand the separation: only thus can man be made to know himself; only thus can God’s proper praise be knowingly and unfeignedly rendered to him.
[←161]
See above, Sect. 9. note. Lib. arb. ‘The power of willing,’ thus asserted to be free. Vis lib. arb. ‘The power of this power,’ etc. etc. ‘Freewill.’
[←162]
It is necessary to mark with precision the amount of this concession. Man has a rational will (not that his reason is seated in his will; it is a distinct faculty; and we should say more correctly, man has an understanding as well as a will) which brutes do not have; and through the means of which he may become the subject of spiritual influences. There is a spirit in man; and this spirit may be renewed and invigorated by the Holy Ghost, so as to discern spiritual objects, and to perform spiritual acts. But how does this affect the reality of the natural blindness and impotency of the rational will? It presupposes that reality.
[←163]
Nomen. He does not mean that God should be called by this name; but that it is a property which, as to him, should be a name; it is what separates the individual, in the recognition of others, from all that resemble him.
[←164]
Odibilis. I do not find any words like these, either in the Canonical Scriptures, or in the Apocrypha. Some have supposed Luther refers to Wis 37.3, “O wicked imagination, where did you come from to cover earth with deceit?”
[←165]
Antiphrasis: the use of a word in a sense opposite to its normal sense (especially in irony).
[←166]
Quadruplatorum. This name was applied, under the Roman law, to public informers, who gained a fourth of the accused’s goods, or of the fine imposed upon him: or, as others say, because they accused persons who, upon conviction, used to be condemned to pay fourfold; as those who were guilty of illegal usury, gaming, or the like. But chiefly mercenary and false accusers, or litigants, were called by this name; and also those judges who, making themselves parties in a cause, decided in their own favour. Seneca calls those who, for small services, sought great returns, ‘quadruplatores beneficiorum suorum;’ overrating and exaggerating them. — Luther, however, may possibly have no allusion to these customs, but uses the term according to its essential meaning, for a ‘bouncer’ or ‘exaggerator,’ insinuating, that Erasmus’ statements were of this kind. But uniting it with Histrionum rather leads us to some notorious class or community of persons.
[←167]
Propria, pura, sobria. Prop. ‘plain,’ as opposed to| figurative; pur. simple, as opposed to ornamented; sobr. temperate, as opposed to extravagant.
[←168]
Luther’s distinction here is neither profitable, nor just, nor safe: unprofitable, because the amount of the exception is small and hard to define; unjust, because God does, in fact, always interpose. “He works all things after the counsel of his own will.” “Not a sparrow falls to the ground without your Father;” “He is all (things) in all (things).” It is unsafe because, if Freewill is admitted anywhere, then why not everywhere? who will yield to our authority when we say, it is here, but it is not there? The truth is, man is a free-agent, though not a free-wilier in spiritual things; and he is no more free in temporal things, and in his dealings with the inferior creatures. (See Sect. 24. note.)
[←169]
Pueros. Puer, as opposed to perfectos; en tois teleioiv Men of full age, as opposed to babes. (1Cor 2.6)
[←170]
Nodus in scirpo quaeritur. A proverb for stumbling upon plain ground.
[←171]
Laurent or Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) – His textual analysis proved that the “Donation of Constantine” was a forgery. At the 1457 feast of St. Thomas, at the Dominican church in Rome, Valla opposed philosophy (the works of Aristotle and the Scholastics) to theology, and to the Word of God. He criticized the scholastics for adulterating the pure word of God with pagan Greek philosophy. He advocated a return to the Scriptures, whose truth would be revealed by a close textual study in the original languages. This was called “humanist theology.” A Companion to the Worlds of the Renaissance, ed. Guido Ruggiero (Blackwell Pub., Oxford UK, 2007), p. 341.
[←172]
Quam tamen dubiam habent. The pretended ambiguity of Scripture is a point on which Erasmus laid great stress, and which Luther,