As regards Occam’s teaching concerning man, his Fall and his powers, so far as this affects the question of a correct understanding of Luther’s development: in the matter of original sin it agreed with that of Aquinas and Scotus, according to which its essence was a _carentia iustitiæ debitæ_, i.e. _originalis_; likewise it asserted the existence of concupiscence in man, the _fomes_ or tinder of sin, as Occam is fond of calling it, as the consequence of original sin; on the other hand it minimised too much the evil effects of original sin on the reason and on the will, by assuming that these powers still remain in man almost unimpaired. This was due to the nominalistic identification of the soul with its faculties; as the soul remained the same as before, so, they said, the powers as a whole also remained the same.[338] The “disabling” of these powers of which St. Thomas and the other Scholastics speak, i.e. the weakening which the Council of Trent also teaches (“_liberum arbitrium viribus attenuatum et inclinatum_”),[339] was not sufficiently emphasised. Gabriel Biel, whose views are of some weight on account of his connection with Luther, finds the rectitude of the natural will (_rectitudo_) in its liberty, and this, he says, has remained intact because it is, as a matter of fact, the will itself, from which it does not differ.[340] In other passages, it is true, he speaks of “wounds”; for owing to concupiscence the will is “inconstant and changeable”; but he nevertheless reverts to “_rectitudo_,” erroneously relegating the results of original sin to the lower powers alone. Following Occam, and against St. Thomas and Scotus, he makes of concupiscence a “_qualitas_,” viz. a “_qualitas corporalis_.”[341] Again, following his master and d’Ailly, Biel asserts—and this is real Occamism—that the will is able without grace to follow the dictates of right reason (“_dictamen rectæ rationis_”) in everything, and is therefore able of itself to keep the whole law of nature, even to love God purely and above all things.[342] An example of how inaccurate Biel is in the details of his theological discussions has been pointed out by Denifle, who shows that in quoting three various opinions of the greater Scholastics on a question of the doctrine of original sin (“_utrum peccatum originale sit aliquid positivum in anima vel in carne_”) “not one of the opinions is correctly given,” and yet this “superficial and wordy author was one of Luther’s principal sources of information regarding the best period of Scholasticism.”[343]