In his “Table-Talk” Luther elsewhere declares it to be his “final opinion” that “whoever defends man’s free-will and says that it is capable of acting and co-operating in the very least degree in spiritual matters, has denied Christ.”[847] Absolute determinism, or the entire absence of free-will everywhere, is here no longer expressed. “I admit,” he says, “that you have free-will for milking the cows, for building a house, etc., but not for anything further.”[848] Of spiritual things, however, he says: “Man’s free-will does not work or do anything towards his conversion ... but merely suffers and is the material upon which the Holy Ghost works, as the potter fashions the pot out of the clay, doing this even in those who resist and are unruly like Paul. But after the Holy Ghost has worked on such a rebellious will, He renders it pliable so that it wills as He does.”[849] The example of those “whose bodies are possessed by the devil, who rends them and drags them about, rides and drives them,” he continues, shows how little “man’s will can do” for his conversion.[850]--Johann Aurifaber (1566), the old editor of the “Table-Talk,” says of Luther’s statement, referred to above, concerning his “final opinion”: “There you see, dear Christian brother, that it is a lie what some say and give out, more particularly the Synergists, viz.: that the dear Man of God modified in any way his opinion on free-will, which they term hard because it is directly opposed to their heresy. And yet they boast of being Luther’s disciples!”[851] In his own mind Luther practically denied his doctrine as often as he struggled with remorse, or sought to overcome his terrors of conscience. Few men have had to exert their will with such energy (as we shall have occasion to point out later, vol. v., xxxii.) to hold their own against inward unrest. He, the advocate of the servitude of the will, in his struggles with himself and his better feelings, made his soul the battlefield of free-will, i.e. of a will vindicating its freedom.