The Nominalists doubtless recognised the supernatural order as distinct from the natural, and Occam as well as Biel, d’Ailly and Gerson do not here differ materially from the rest of the Scholastics; but the limits of natural ability, more particularly in respect of keeping the commandments and loving God above all, are carried too far. Luther’s masters had here insisted with great emphasis on the argument of Scotus which they frequently and erroneously made to prove even more than was intended, viz. that as reason is capable of realising that man is able to fulfil the law and to render such love, and as the will is in a position to carry out all that reason puts before it, therefore man is able to fulfil both requirements.[344] In this argument insufficient attention has been paid to the difficulties which interior and exterior circumstances place in the way of fallen man. Theologians generally were very much divided in opinion concerning the possibility of fulfilling these requirements, and the better class of Scholastics denied it, declaring that the assistance of actual grace was requisite, which, however, they held, was given to all men of good will. Against the doctrine which Biel made his own, that man is able, without grace, to avoid all mortal sin,[345] keep all the commandments and love God above all things, not only Thomists, but even some of the Nominalists protested.[346] Here again, according to Denifle, a serious error, committed by Biel regarding St. Thomas, must be pointed out, one, too, which may have had its effect upon Luther. Biel erroneously makes the holy Doctor say the opposite of what he really teaches when he ascribes to him the proposition: “_Homo potest cavere peccata mortalia_ [_omnia_] _sine gratia_.” As Denifle reminds us again, it was “from this author that Luther drew in great part his knowledge of the earlier Scholastics.”[347] Biel, however, in his sermons and instructions to preachers restricts the thesis of the possibility of loving God above all things through our natural powers. This, man is able to do, he says, “according to some writers, more especially in the state of paradisiacal innocence, but the act is not so perfect and not so easy as with God’s grace and is without supernatural merit. God has so ordained that He will not accept any act as meritorious for heaven excepting only that which is elicited by grace” (“_ex gratia elicitum_”).[348]