That such a setting aside of the specifically Mosaic Law appealed to him, we can readily understand. But does he include in his reprobation the whole “_lex moralis_,” the Natural Law which the Old Testament merely confirmed, and which, according to Luther himself, is written in man’s heart by nature? This Law he asserts is implicitly obeyed as soon as the heart, by its acceptance of the assurance of salvation, is cleansed and filled with the love of God.[24] And yet “in many instances he applies to this Natural Law what he says elsewhere of the Law of Moses; it too affrights us, increases sin, kills, and stands opposed to the Gospel.”[25] Desirous of destroying once and for all any idea of righteousness or merit being gained through any fulfilment of any Law, he forgets himself, in his usual way, and says strong things against the Law which scarcely agree with other statements he makes elsewhere. Owing to polemists taking too literally what he said, he has been represented as holding opinions on the Law and the Gospel which in point of fact he does not hold; indeed, some have made him out a real Antinomian. Yet we often hear him exhorting his followers to bow with humility to the commandments, to bear the yoke of submission and thus to get the better of sin and death. Nevertheless, particularly when dealing with those whose “conscience is affrighted,” he is very apt to forget what he has just said in favour of the Law, and prefers to harp on his pet theology: “Man must pay no heed to the Law but only to Christ.” “In dealing with this aspect of the matter we cannot speak too slightingly of so contemptuous a thing [as the Law].”[26] His changeableness and obscurity on this point is characteristic of his mode of thought. At times he actually goes so far as to ascribe to the Law merely an outward, deterrent force and to make its sole value in ordinary life consist in the restraining of evil. Even when he is at pains to emphasise the “real, theological” use of the Law as preparatory to grace, he deliberately introduces statements concerning the Law which do not at all help to explain the matter. According to him, highly as we must esteem the Law for its sacred character, its effect upon people who are unable to keep it is nevertheless not wholesome but rather harmful, because thereby sin is multiplied, particularly the sin of unbelief, i.e. as seen in want of confidence in the certainty of salvation and in the striving after righteousness by the exact fulfilling of the Law.[27] “Whoever feels contrition on account of the Law,” he says for instance, “cannot attain to grace, on the contrary he is getting further and further away from it.”[28]