Luther now appeals to the belief in fate with which the heathen were already acquainted. He also appeals to the Gospel which surely gives him reason, for does not Christ say (Matt. x.): “Not a sparrow shall fall to the ground without your Father in Heaven,” and “the very hairs of your head are all numbered”? And in Isaias xli. does not God mockingly challenge the people: “Do ye also good and evil if you can”? The Pope and the defenders of the Bull, with their doctrine of free-will, he looks upon as prophets of Baal and he calls to them ironically: “Cheer up and be men; do what you can, attempt what is possible, and prepare yourselves for grace by your own free-will. It is a great disgrace that you are unable to produce anything from experience in support of your teaching.” “The experience of all,” he says boldly, “testifies to the contrary”; God has our life in His hands, and how much more all our actions, even the most insignificant. It is Pelagian to say that free-will is able, by means of earnest effort (“_si studiose laboret_”), to do anything good; it is Pelagian to think that the will can prepare itself for grace; Pelagian too, is the principle handed down in the schools, that God gives His grace to the man who does what he can. For if we do what we can, we perform the works of the flesh! “Do we not know the works which are of the flesh? St. Paul specifies them, Galatians v.: Fornication, uncleanness, immodesty, luxury, envies, murders, etc. This is what free-will works, i.e. what is of its nature, viz. works of death; for in Romans viii. we read: ‘The wisdom of the flesh is death and an enemy to God.’ How can we then speak of preparation for grace by enmity with God, of preparation for life by death?”[642] In these somewhat disorderly effusions of his pen he repeatedly harks back to the Bible, strangely forcing his texts. Paul denies free-will, saying in Ephesians i.: “God works all in all,” thus confirming the fact “that man, even when he does and thinks what is wrong, is not responsible.”[643] “God even works what is evil in the impious,”[644] as is written in Proverbs xvi.: “The Lord hath made all things for Himself, the wicked also for the evil day,” and in Romans i., of the heathen: “God delivered them up to a reprobate sense to do those things which are not convenient.”