For Luther, who brings forward the above arbitrary objection in his Commentary on Romans, it would have been very easy to have made use of the explanation just given, for it is found in St. Thomas’s Commentary on this very Epistle. Luther, one would have thought, would certainly have consulted this work for his interpretation of the Epistle, were it only on account of its historical interest, and even if it had not been the best work on the subject which had so far appeared. But no, it seems that he never looked into this Commentary, nor even into the older glosses of Peter Lombard on the Epistle to the Romans, then much in use; in the latter he would at once have found the refutation of the charge he brought against the Scholastics of advocating the doctrine of Aristotle on righteousness by works, as the gloss to the classic passage (Romans iii. 27) runs as follows: “For righteousness is not by works (‘_non ex operibus est iustitia_’), but works are the result of righteousness, and therefore we do not say: ‘the righteousness of works, but the works of righteousness.’”[365] * * * * * He does not even trouble to uphold the frivolous accusation that the Schoolmen had been acquainted only with Aristotelian righteousness, but actually refutes it by another objection. He finds fault with the “scholastic theologians” for having, as he says in the Commentary on Romans, “held the doctrine of the expulsion of sin and the infusion of grace” to be a single change.[366] He hereby admits that they were familiar with something more than mere Aristotelian righteousness, for in Aristotle there is certainly no question of any infusion of grace. But Luther frequently speaks in this way of the distinction which the Scholastics made between acquired and infused righteousness. The changeableness and inconstancy of his assertions regarding the doctrines of the Scholastics is quite remarkable. He makes no difficulty about admitting later, against his previous statements, that the Scholastics did not teach that man was able to love God above all things merely by his own strength; this was the teaching only of the Scotists and the “Moderns” (i.e. Nominalists or Occamists).[367] At that time he was perhaps better acquainted with Biel, who instances Thomas and Bonaventure in opposition to this doctrine.[368] Luther was also careless in the accounts he gave even of the theology of his own circle, viz. that of the Occamists, and the injustice he does Scholasticism as a whole, he repeats against his own school by exaggerating its faults or suppressing the necessary distinctions in order to be the better able to refute its theses by the Bible and St. Augustine. As therefore it is impossible to form an opinion on Scholasticism as a whole from Luther’s assertions, so we cannot trust his account even of his own masters, in whose works he thinks himself so well versed.