Luther’s tendency to controversial theology and his very manner of proceeding, in itself far less positive than negative, bore the Occamist stamp. It is true he was predisposed this way by nature, yet the criticism of the nominalistic school, the acuteness and questioning attitude of Occam and d’Ailly, lent an additional impulse to his putting forth like efforts. We shall not be mistaken in assuming that his doctrinal arbitrariness was, to a certain extent at least, a result of the atmosphere of decadent theology in which his lot had been cast. The paradoxes to which he so frequently descends are manifestly modelled on the antilogies with which Occam’s works abound; like Occam, he frequently leaves the reader in doubt as to his meaning, or speaks later in quite a different way from what he did before. Occam’s garrulity was, so it would appear, infectious. Luther himself, while praising his acuteness, blames Occam for the long amplifications to which he was addicted.[406] On more than one occasion Luther reproaches himself for his discursiveness and superabundance of rhetoric. Even the Commentaries he wrote in his youth on the Psalms and the Epistle to the Romans prove to the reader that his self-reproof was well deserved, whilst the second Commentary also manifests that spirit of criticism and arbitrariness, bold to overstep the barriers of the traditional teaching of the Church, which he had likewise received from his Occamist masters. * * * * * Various attempts have been made to point out other theological influences, besides those considered above, as having worked upon Luther in his earlier years. It would carry us too far to discuss these opinions individually, the more so that there are scarcely sufficient data to hand to lead to a decision. Luther himself, who should be the principal witness, is very reticent concerning the authors and the opinions he made use of in forming his own ideas. He would rather give the impression that everything had grown up spontaneously from his own thought and research; that his teaching sprang into being from himself alone without the concurrence of outsiders, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter. He assumes to himself with the utmost emphasis the precedence in the discovery of the Gospel, for instance, against rivals such as Carlstadt and Zwingli; he alone had read his Bible, and Carlstadt was quite unacquainted with it; he only, with illumination from above, had discovered everything.