In his teaching, as we already know, original sin remains, even after baptism, as a real sin in the guise of concupiscence; by its evil desires and self-seeking it poisons all man’s actions to the end of his life, except in so far as his deeds are transformed by the “faith” from above into works pleasing to God, or rather, are accounted as such. Owing to the enmity to God which prevails in the man who thus groans under the weight of sin even “civil justice is mere sinfulness; it cannot stand before the absolute demands of God. All that man can do is to acknowledge that things really are so and to confess his unrighteousness.”[11] Such an attitude Luther calls “humility.” Catholic moralists and ascetics have indeed ever made all other virtues to proceed from humility as from a fertile source, but there is no need to point out how great is the difference between Luther’s “humility” and that submission of the heart to God’s will of which Catholic theologians speak. Humility, as Luther understood it, was an “admission of our corruption”; according to him it is our recognition of the enduring character of original sin that leads us to God and compels us “to admit the revelation of the Grace of God bestowed on us in Christ’s work of redemption,” by means of “faith, i.e. security of salvation.” It is possible to speak “only of a gradual restraining of sin,” so strongly are we drawn to evil. We indeed receive grace by faith, but of any infused grace or blotting out of sin, Luther refuses to hear, since the inclinations which result from original sin still persist. Hence “by grace sin is not blotted out.” Rather, the grace which man receives is an imputed grace; “the real answer to the question as to how Luther arrived at his conviction that imputed grace was necessary and not to be escaped is to be found in his own inward experience that the tendencies due to original sin remain, even in the regenerate. This sin, which persists in the baptised, ... forces him, if he wishes to avoid the pitfall of despair ... to keep before his mind the consoling thought ... ‘that God does not impute to him his sin.’”[12] 2. The two Poles: the Law and the Gospel One of the ethical questions that most frequently engaged Luther’s attention concerned the relation of Law and Gospel. In reality it touched the foundations of his moral teaching.