He showed that, whereas Luther had formerly refused to recognise any repentance due to fear of the menaces of the Law, he had come to hold up the terrors of the Law before the eyes of sinners. As a matter of fact Luther did, at a later date, teach that justifying faith was preceded by a contrition produced by the Law; such repentance due to fear was excited by God Almighty in the man deprived of moral freedom, as in a “_materia passiva_.”—The following theses were issued as Agricola’s: “1. The Law [the Decalogue] does not deserve to be called the Word of God. 2. Even should you be a prostitute, a cuckold, an adulterer or any other kind of sinner, yet, so long as you believe, you are on the road to salvation. 3. If you are sunk in the depths of sin, if only you believe, you are really in a state of grace. 4. The Decalogue belongs to the petty sessions, not to the pulpit. 11. The words of Peter: ‘That by good works you may make sure your calling and election’ [2 Peter i. 10] are all rubbish. 12. So soon as you begin to fancy that Christianity requires this or that, or that people should be good, honest, moral, holy and chaste, you have already rent asunder the Gospel [Luke, ch. vi.].”[46] In his counter theses Luther indignantly rejected such opinions: “the deduction is not valid,” he says, for instance, “when people make out, that what is not necessary for justification, either at the outset, later, or at the end, should not to be taught” (as obligatory), e.g. the keeping of the Law, personal co-operation and good works. “Even though the Law be useless to justification, still it does not follow that it is to be made away with, or not to be taught.”[47] * * * * * Luther was the more indignant at the open opposition manifest in his own neighbourhood and at the yet worse things that were being whispered, because he feared, that, owing to the friendly understanding between Agricola, Jacob Schenk and others, the new movement might extend abroad. The doctrine, in its excesses, seemed to him as compromising as the teaching of Carlstadt and the doings of the fanatics in former days. In reality it did embody a fanatical doctrine and an extremely dangerous pseudo-theology; in Antinomianism the pseudo-mystical ideas concerning freedom and inner experience which from the very beginning had brought Luther into conflict with the “Law,” culminated in a sort of up-to-date gnosticism. We now find Luther, in the teeth of his previous statements, declaring that “Whoever makes away with the Law, makes away with the Gospel.”[48] He says: “Agricola perverts our doctrine, which is the solace of consciences, and seeks by its means to set up the freedom of the flesh”;[49] the grace preached by Agricola was really nothing more than immoral licence.[50]