against Luther Christ’s call upon Jerusalem to repent (Matt. 23:37), and the will of God that no one
should perish, but that all should be saved (Ezek. 33:11; 1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Pet. 3:9). He treated him
with respect, but charged him with attempting to drive out one extreme by another.
Luther appreciated the merits of Erasmus, and frankly acknowledged his literary
superiority.^533 But he knew his weakness, and expressed, as early as 1516, the fear that he understood
too little of the grace of God.^534 He found in his writings more refutation of error than demonstration
of truth, more love of peace than love of the cross. He hated his way of insinuating doubts. On June
20, 1523, he wrote to Oecolampadius:^535 "May the Lord strengthen you in your proposed explanation
of Isaiah [in the University of Basel], although Erasmus, as I understand, does not like it .... He has
done what he was ordained to do: he has introduced the ancient languages, in the place of injurious
scholastic studies. He will probably die like Moses in the land of Moab. He does not lead to better
studies which teach piety. I would rather he would entirely abstain from explaining and paraphrasing
the Scriptures, for he is not up to this work .... He has done enough to uncover the evil; but to reveal
the good and to lead into the land of promise, is not his business, in my opinion." In a letter to
Erasmus, dated April, 1524, a few months before the open breach, he proposed to him that they
should let each other alone, and apologized for his subserviency to the papists, and his want of
courage, in a manner which could not but wound the sensitive scholar.^536
Luther on the Slavery of the Human Will.
He waited a whole year before he published his reply on the "Slavery of the Will" (December,
1525). It is one of his most vigorous and profound books, full of grand ideas and shocking
exaggerations, that border on Manichaeism and fatalism.^537 He thanked Erasmus for going to the
root of the controversy instead of troubling him "about the papacy, purgatory, indulgences, and
other fooleries." He inseparably connects divine foreknowledge and foreordination, and infers from
God’s almighty power that all things happen by necessity, and that there can be no freedom in the
creature.^538 He represents the human will as a horse or a donkey which goes just as the rider directs
it; and that rider is the Devil in the state of fallen nature, and God in the state of grace. The will has
no choice of master; it is God and the Devil who are fighting for its possession. The Scripture
exhortations to repentance and holy living must not be understood seriously, but ironically, as if
God would say to man: Only try to repent and to do good, and you will soon find out that you
cannot do it. He deals with man as a mother with the child: she invites the child to walk, in order
that he may stretch out the arm for help. God speaks in this fashion solely to convict us of our
helplessness, if we do not implore his assistance. Satan said, "Thou art free to act." Moses said,
"Act," in order to convict us, before Satan, of our inability to act.
(^533) He wrote him a very respectful letter, March 28, 1519, thanking him for his great services to the cause of letters, and congratulating
him for being heartily abused by the enemies of truth and light. Even in his book against Erasmus (De Servo Arbitrio), he says at the
beginning: "Viribus eloquentiae et ingenio me longissime superas." And towards the close: "Fateor, tu magnus es et multis iisque
nobilissimis dotibus a Deo ornatus ... ingenio, eruditione, facundia usque ad miraculum. Ego vero nihil habeo et sum, nisi quod Christianum
esse me glorier."Op. Lat. VII. 367 (Erl. Frcf. ed.).
(^534) See his letters to Lange and Spalatin in De Wette, I. 39 sq., 52; 87 sq. To Lange he wrote; "Ich fürchte, Erasmus breitet Christum
und die Gnade Gottes nicht genug aus, von der er gar wenig weiss. Das Menschliche gilt mehr bei ihm als das Göttliche."
(^535) De Wette, II. p. 352 sqq.
(^536) In De Wette, II. 498 sq. Erasmus answered, May 5, 1524.
(^537) Köstlin (I. 773) says that it is not surpassed by any work of Luther, "for energy and acuteness." But Döllinger and Janssen (II. 379)
judge that Luther borrowed it from the Koran rather than from the New Testament.
(^538) "Ipsa ratione teste nullum potest esse liberum arbitrium in homine vel angelo aut ulla creatura."Op. Lat. VII. 366.