He attempts, however, to mingle softer tones with the voices of despair, which, he admits, these theories have let loose. This he can only do at the expense of his own teaching, or by fining it down. He says: whoever is terrified and confused, but then tries to abandon himself with indifference to the severity of God, he, let this be his comfort, is not of the number of those predestined to hell. For only those who are really to be rejected are not afraid[?], “they pay no heed to the danger and say, if I am to be damned, so be it!” On the other hand, confusion and fear are signs of the “_spiritus contribulatus_,” which, according to his promise, God never rejects (Ps. 1.). After all, then, we are forced to ask, according to this, is not man to be saved by his own act, namely, the act of heroic indifference to his eternity? For this act remains an act of man: “Whoever is filled with the fear of God, and, taking courage, throws and precipitates himself into the truth of the promises of God, he will be saved, and be one of the elect.”[494] 3. The Fight against “Holiness-by-Works” and the Observantines in the Commentary on Romans His ideas on predestination were not the direct cause of Luther’s belittling of human effort and the value of good works; the latter tendency was present in him previous to his adoption of rigid predestinarianism; nor does he ever attribute to election by grace any diminution of man’s powers or duties, whether in the case of the chosen or of the reprobate. The same commandments are given to those whom God’s terrible decree has destined for hell as to the elect; they possess the same human abilities, the same weaknesses. It was not predestination which led him in the first instance to attribute such strength to concupiscence in man, and to invest it, as he ultimately did, with an actually sinful and culpable character. His ideas concerning the absolute corruption of the children of Adam, even to the extinction of any liberty in the doing of what is good, had another origin, and, in their development, were influenced far more by false mysticism than by the predestinarian delusion.