Deprived of any power of choice or self-determination, man is at the mercy of external agents, diabolical or Divine, to such an extent that he is unable to will except what they will. Whoever has and keeps the Spirit of God and the faith cannot do otherwise than fulfil the Will of God; but whoever is under the domination of the devil is his spiritual captive. To sum up what was said previously: man retains at most the right to dispose of things inferior to him, not, however, any actual, moral freedom of choice, still less any liberty for doing what is good such as would exclude all interior compulsion. He is created for eternal death or for everlasting life; his destiny he cannot escape; his lot is already pre-ordained. Luther’s doctrine brings him into line, even as regards the “harshest consequences of the predestinarian dogma, with Zwingli, Calvin, and Melanchthon in his earliest evangelical Theology.”[556] According to one of the most esteemed of Lutheran theologians, “what finds full and comprehensive expression in the work ‘_De servo arbitrio_’ is simply the conviction which had inspired Luther throughout his struggle for his pet doctrine of salvation, viz. the doctrine of the pure grace of God as against the prevailing doctrine of free will and man’s own works.”[557] According to this theory, in spite of the lack of free will, God requires of man that he should keep the moral law, and, to encourage him, sets up a system of rewards and punishments. Man is constrained to this as it were in mockery, that, as Luther says, God may make him to realise his utter powerlessness.[558] God indeed deplores the spiritual ruin of His people—this much the author is willing to allow to his opponent Erasmus—but, the God Who does so is the God of revelation, not the Hidden God. “The God Who conceals Himself beneath His Majesty grieves not at man’s undoing, He takes no step to remedy it, but works all things, both life and death.” God, “by that unsearchable knowledge of His, wills the death of the sinner.”[559] “Even though Judas acted of his own will and without compulsion, still his willing was the work of God, Who moved him by His Omnipotence as He moves all things.”[560] In the same way, according to Luther, the hardening of Pharao’s heart was in the fullest sense God’s work.[561] Adam’s sin likewise is to be traced back to the Will of God.[562] We must not ask, however, how all this can be reconciled with the goodness and justice of God. We must not expect God to act according to human law.[563] It was necessary to recall the above in order to show how such a doctrine robs the moral law of every inward relation to its last end, and degrades it till it becomes a mere outward, arbitrary barrier. Luther may well thank his want of logic that this system failed to be carried to its extremest consequences; the ways of the world are not those of the logician.