[616] For instance, “Schol. Rom.,” p. 136 ff.: “Natura nostra vitio primi peccati tam profunda est in seipsam incurva, ut non solum optima dona Dei sibi inflectat ... verum etiam hoc ipsum ignoret.... Hoc vitium propriissimo nomine Scriptura Aon, id est iniquitatem, pravitatem, curvitatem appellat.... Talis curvitas est necessario inimica crucis, cum crux mortificet omnia nostra, illa autem se et sua vivificet.” Therefore it is necessary (and here he comes to his personal ideas against the self-righteous) to reach a point where, “iustitia et sapientia omnis devoratur et absorbetur.... Charitas Dei extinguit fruitionem propriæ iustitiæ, quia non nisi solum et purum Deum diligit, non dona ipsa Dei, sicut hipocritæ iustitiarii.” “What Luther says of pure love,” Denifle remarks (Denifle, 1¹, p. 484), “rests merely on his misconception of Tauler.” He points out that, in his Commentary on Romans, owing to his false idea of self-love he went so far as to “explain the command ‘love thy neighbour as thyself’ in quite a different sense from that hitherto taught by the Church, for ourselves we may only hate.... According to him, this command means: hate thyself that thou mayest love thy neighbour alone.” (“Oblitus tui, solum proximum diligas.”)
[617] “Schol. Rom.,” p. 59.
[618] Ibid., p. 133.
[619] Ibid., p. 139.
[620] “Schol. Rom.,” p. 133 f.
[621] Ibid., p. 137. Cp. above, p. 234, n. 4 end.
[622] Heidelberg Disputation, on thesis 24. “Werke,” Weim. ed., 1, p. 363. “Opp. Lat. var.,” 1, p. 401.
[623] Ibid., theses 19, 20.
[624] Cp. Braun, “Concupiscenz,” p. 285.
[625] Cp. Luther’s appeal to Tauler: “De ista patientia Dei et sufferentia vide Taulerum,” etc. (see above, p. 232). Denifle, 1¹, p. 484, remarks: “The above statements are in part founded on Tauler, whom Luther misunderstood throughout. The two stood on different ground and had a different starting-point and a different goal.”