Luther, meanwhile, was straining every nerve in the cause of the intellectual revolution of which the plan floated in his mind. It seemed as though he were incapable of fatigue.
His numerous labours, his constant cares and the excessive mental strain are apparent from his letters. He writes of a supposed portent in the world of nature. “The omen fills me with fear, it can presage nothing but evil.” “I am altogether immersed in Erasmus,” he says, “I shall take care not to let anything slip, for not a single word of his is true:” he writes thus to Spalatin.[613] “Every day I am overwhelmed with complaints from our parishes,” he laments to the pastor of Zwickau: “Satan is busy in our midst. The people absolutely refuse to pay anything towards the support of the preachers.” He intends, he says, to persuade the Elector to organise a visitation of all the churches throughout the land, he is also anxious to introduce uniformity in matters of ritual; all this involves him in a hundred difficulties.[614] Disagreements with the Zwinglians of Strasburg cause some trouble. At the same time the negotiations with the Teutonic Order call for his whole care and attention, the apostasy and marriage of Albert, the Grand Master, greatly raising his hopes.
It was in this frame of mind, and in the midst of all this manifold business, that Luther threw himself into the controversy on man’s free-will. It was his object to establish a literary foundation for his new doctrines as a whole by vindicating a pet doctrine on account of which he had been so mercilessly attacked.[615]
3. The Religion of the Enslaved Will. The Controversy between Luther and Erasmus (1524-1525)
That the will is free is one of the most indisputable facts of our inner consciousness. Where there is reason there must needs be a corresponding freedom, i.e. freedom from interior necessity.
Freedom is the basis of all worship of God, and if external compulsion is rightly excluded from the idea of religion, surely still more opposed to it is the assumption that the will lacks freedom when it seeks and serves God. The true dignity of the soul’s worship of God consists in the voluntary payment of homage to the highest of all beings in the natural as well as the supernatural order. “God has made you without your co-operation,” says Augustine, “but He will not save you without it.”[616] God’s greatness and omnipotence are enhanced by His creation of beings gifted with the power of self-determination, who can will or not, who are free to choose this or that and are in a position to embrace what is good instead of what is evil.