In another passage he describes, perhaps unconsciously, his experiences with his own will, so inclined to contradiction and anger; he says: That the will is not free is evident from the fact that, “it becomes the more provoked the greater the opposition it encounters....[800] Whoever pursues an object passionately is not open to correction, as experience shows. If he gives way, this is not willingly, but under pressure, and because it serves his purpose. It is only the man who has no interest whatever who allows things to take their own course.”[801] From time to time the several pet ideas which had played a part in his previous development are harnessed to his argument and made to prove the servitude of the will. We are conscious, he says, that, pressed down to the earth by concupiscence, we do not act as we should; hence man is not free to do what is good. The “sting” of this inability remains, as experience teaches, in spite of all theological distinctions. Natural reason, which groans so loudly under it and seeks to resist God’s action, would prove it even were it not taught in Holy Scripture. But Paul, throughout the whole of his Epistle to the Romans, while vindicating grace, teaches that we are incapable of anything, even when we fancy we are doing what is good.[802] And further, the desire of gaining merit for heaven--the supposed error which he opposed quite early in his career owing to his distaste for works generally--can only be finally vanquished when the idol of free-will is overthrown. Then, too, he says, the fear of undeserved damnation by God also vanishes; for if there be no merit for heaven, then neither can there be any for hell; accordingly we may say without hesitation what must otherwise be repellent to every mind, viz. that God condemns to hell although man has not deserved it (“_immeritos damnat_”);[803] this is the highest degree of faith, to hold fast to the belief that “God is righteous when of His own will He makes us of necessity to be worthy of damnation (‘_necessario damnabiles facit_’), so that He would seem, as Erasmus says, to take delight in the torments of the damned and be more worthy of hatred than of love.”[804] Here another element of his earlier development and mental trend comes into view, viz. a disregard for the rights of reason, based ostensibly on the rights of faith.