The position which Luther had assumed in the Commentary on Romans in 1515-1516 concerning the doctrine of human free-will has already been discussed in detail (vol. i., p. 202 ff.). It is of the utmost importance to follow up his other statements on free-will dating from that period, and the subsequent advance in his views during his public struggle till the publication of the decisive book “_De servo arbitrio_” in 1525. It not only affords a deep, psychological and theological insight into his train of thought, but also shows how his denial of free-will was the central point of his whole teaching. At the same time we shall notice certain emphatic statements which he makes, but which do not usually occupy a due place in descriptions of his theology and which accordingly might easily be regarded by our readers as not his at all, were they not attested conscientiously and in detail by Luther’s own writings. We refer to such assertions as the following: “Everything happens of necessity”; “Man, when he does what is evil, is not master of himself”; “Man does evil because God ceases to work in him”; “By virtue of His nature God’s ineluctable concursus determines everything, even the most trivial,” hence “inevitable necessity” compels us in “all that we do and everything that happens,” “God alone moves and impels all that He has made” (“_movet agit, rapit_”), nay, “He decrees all things in advance by His infallible will,” including the inevitable damnation of those who are damned.--We shall hear these views expounded below by Luther himself as the core and kernel of his teaching (“_summa causæ_”); with spirit and energy he advocates them through some hundred pages in one of his principal works, against the greatest of the Humanists, who had dared to attack him; to question his fundamental dogma was, says Luther, to “place the knife at his throat.” _The Development of Luther’s Opposition to Free-Will from 1516 to 1524_ What Luther advanced in his Commentary on Romans, against man’s power of choice for what is good, has been summed up as follows by Johann Ficker, the editor of the Commentary: Luther allowed nothing to deter him from following up his new theories, nor did he even shrink from setting up the proposition of “the absolute impossibility of any good in the natural sphere,” or from “stating in the strongest terms of determinism the exclusive power and action of the salutary and unconditional Divine Will.”[624]