Luther also quoted the Bible passages regarding God’s will for the salvation of all men, but only in order to say of them: “such expressions are always to be understood exclusively of the elect.” It is merely “wisdom of the flesh” to attempt to find a will of God that all men be saved in the assurance of St. Paul: “God wills that all men shall be saved” (1 Tim. ii. 4), or “in the passages which say, that He gave His Son for us, that He created man for eternal life, and that everything was created for man, but man for God that he might enjoy Him eternally.”[492] Other objections which Luther makes he sets aside with the same facility by a reference to the thoughts he has developed above.[493] Thus the first: Why did God give to man free will by means of which he can merit either reward or punishment? His answer is: Where is this free will? Man has no free will for doing what is good. Then a second objection: “God damns no one without sin, and he who is forced to sin is damned unjustly.” The answer to this is new: God ordains it so that those who are to be damned are gladly, even though of necessity, in sin (“_dat voluntarie velle in peccato esse et manere et diligere iniquitatem_”). Finally, the last objection: “Why does God give them commandments which He does not will them to keep, yea hardens their will so much that they desire to act contrary to the law? Is not God in this case the cause of their sinning and being damned?” “Yes, that is the difficulty,” he admits, “which, as a matter of fact, has the most force; it is the weightiest of all. But to it the Apostle makes a special answer when he teaches: God so wills it, and God Who thus wills, is not evil. Everything is His, just as the clay belongs to the potter and waits on his service.” Enough, he continues, “God commands that the elect shall be saved, and that those who are destined for hell shall be entangled in evil in order that He may show forth His mercy and also His anger.” It makes one shudder to hear how he cuts short the sighs of the unhappy soul which sees itself a victim of God’s harshness. It complains: “It is a hard and bitter lot that God should seek His honour in my misery!” And Luther replies: “See, there we have the wisdom of the flesh! _My_ misery; ‘my,’ ‘my,’ that is the voice of the flesh. Drop the ‘my’ and say: Be Thou honoured, O Lord.... So long as you do not do that, you are seeking your own will more than the will of God. We must judge of God in a different manner from that in which we judge of man. God owes no man anything.” “With this hard doctrine,” he concludes, “the knife is placed at the throat of holiness-by-works and fleshly wisdom and therefore the flesh is naturally incensed, and breaks out into blasphemies; but man must learn that his salvation does not depend upon his acts, but that it lies quite outside of him, namely, in God, Who has chosen him.”