In his passionate opposition to the real or imaginary self-righteous he allows himself, in these lectures, to be drawn into an ever deeper distrust of man’s ability to do anything that is good. The nightmare of self-righteousness never leaves him for a moment. His attack would have been justifiable if he had merely been fighting against sinful self-righteousness which is really selfishness, or against the delusion that natural morality will suffice before God. Nor does it appear who is defending such erroneous ideas against him, or which school upheld the thesis Luther is always opposing, viz. that there is a saving righteousness which arises, is preserved, and works without the preventing and accompanying grace of God. It is, however, clear that there was in his own soul a dislike for works; so strong in fact is his feeling in this regard that he simply calls all works “works of the law,” and cannot be too forcible in demonstrating the antagonism of the Apostle to their supposed over-estimation. Probably one reason for his selection of this Epistle for interpretation was that it appeared to him to agree even better than other biblical works with his own ideas against “self-righteousness.” We must now consider in detail some of the leading ideas of the Commentary on Romans. 2. Gloomy Views regarding God and Predestination The tendency to a dismal conception of God plays, in combination with his ideas on predestination, an incisive part in Luther’s Commentary on Romans, which, so far, has received too little attention. The tendency is noticeable throughout his early mental history. He was never able to overcome his former temptations to sadness and despair on account of the possibility of his irrevocable predestination to hell, sufficiently to attain to the joy of the children of God and to the trustful recognition of God’s general and certain will for our salvation. The advice which Staupitz, among others, gave him was assuredly correct, viz. to take refuge in the wounds of Christ, and Luther probably tried to follow it. But we do not learn that he paid diligent heed to the further admonitions of the ancient ascetics, to exert oneself in the practice of good works, as though one’s predestination depended entirely on the works one performs with the grace of God. On the contrary, of set purpose, he avoided any effort on his own part and preferred the misleading mystical views of Quietism. The melancholy idea of predestination again peeps out unabashed in the passage in his Commentary on the Psalms, where he says, that Christ “drank the cup of pain for His elect, but not for all.”[454]