In 1515 he declares that evil concupiscence or sin “cannot be removed from us by any counsel or work,” and that “we all recognise it to be quite invincible (“_invincibilem esse concupiscentiam penitus_”);[275] invincible, i.e. in the sense of ineradicable, for which reason, as he again repeats here, it must at least be rendered innocuous by humble prayer for God’s help. In spite of the strong expression “_invincibilis_,” and in spite of the comparison he makes elsewhere between the evil inclination and Cerberus or Antæus,[276] he does not go further here than in another assertion in the Commentary on the Psalms which has also been urged against him: “the passion of anger, pride, sensuality, when it is aroused, is strong, yea invincible (‘_immo invincibilis_’), as experience teaches,” i.e. it appears so to the person attacked by it. He had just remarked that in such a case we must hope in God and despair of ourselves. He describes in the strongest terms, in the Commentary on the Psalms, the strength of concupiscence in habitual sinners who are not accustomed to turn to God’s grace: “the sinner who is oppressed by vice, and feels the devil and his body of sin forcing him to evil, allows the inner voice to speak constantly against sin, and severely blames himself in his conscience ... reason and the moral sense, remnants left over from the ruin of original sin, awaken in him and cry without ceasing to the Lord, even though the will sins, forced thereto by sin.”[277] We repeat, that in his Commentary on the Psalms he does not yet actually deny natural freedom in the doing of what is good. The view that man, without God’s grace, is entirely lacking in freedom with regard to his passions—a view which, it is true, permeates Luther’s Commentary on Romans—was not the starting-point of Luther’s theological development. It was the end of the first stage through which he had passed. This doctrine reached later on its culminating point in his book, “_De servo arbitrio_,” against Erasmus. Here, at the head of his proofs, he openly confesses himself a determinist, admitting that God has decreed beforehand all man’s actions; any such determinism is, however, wanting in his earlier life, nor is it to be found in his Commentary on Romans; Luther does not yet show himself to be led by determinist ideas. Even in his work against Erasmus there are no forcible grounds for attributing the origin of his new teaching to his inward corruption. Therein he merely denies the freedom of the will for good without grace, though he allows it to be free in indifferent matters, a somewhat inconsistent theory owing to the difficulty of determining exactly the limitations of these indifferent things.