How the ideas of free-will and of God are treated in Luther’s “_De servo arbitrio_” is made still more plain from the conclusions which he draws in this work from the denial of free-will, and deals with without the slightest reserve. The first consequence is the absolute predestination of the reprobate to hell. Luther here throws to the winds the will of God Almighty for the salvation of all men, and he does so, with regard to those who are delivered over to eternal death, with a precision which is quite shocking. They were incapable of being saved because God did not so will it. Owing to the reprobate, God has “an ‘_æternum odium erga homines_,’ not merely a hatred of the demerits and works of free-will, but a hatred which existed even before the world was made.”[760] Hence He inflicts eternal punishment upon those who do not deserve it (“_immeritos damnat_”).[761] And if sinners are thereby confirmed in their sins instead of being converted, this does not matter in the least, for the Spirit of God will nevertheless, in due season, lay hold of the elect and change them into children of God (“_electi tamen manebunt_”).[762] The severity of his doctrine does not here differ in any way from Calvin’s cruel views, though, as the fact is less generally known, Luther’s name has not been so closely associated with predestination to hell as Calvin’s. Luther’s doctrine on this matter did not come so much to the front as that of Calvin, because, unlike the latter, he did not make capital out of it by means of popular and practical exhortations, and because the early Lutherans, under the influence of Melanchthon, who became an opponent of the rigid denial of free-will and of Luther’s views on predestination, soon came to soften their master’s hard sayings. Yet there can be no doubt that the book “_De servo arbitrio_” does contain such teaching quite definitely expressed.