[794] “De servo arbitrio,” p. 719 = 268: “Ego ipse non semel offensus sum usque ad profundum et abyssum desperationis, ut optarem, nunquam esse me creatum hominem, antequam scirem, quam salutaris illa esset desperatio et quam gratiæ propinqua.”
[795] Ibid., p. 633 = 154. To the reader of the present work it will also be familiar. Compare the passages previously quoted, vol. i., 218 f., 235, 238 ff., 259, 317 f., 379, 381.
[796] Ibid., p. 783 = 362 seq.
[797] “De servo arbitrio,” p. 783 = 262 f.: “Ego sane me confiteor, si qua fieri posset, nollem mihi dari liberum arbitrium, aut quippiam in manu mea relinqui, quo ad salutem conari possem,” etc.
[798] Ibid., p. 787 = 368: “Ego vero hoc libro non contuli, sed asserui et assero, ac penes nullum volo esse iudicium, sed omnibus suadeo, ut præstent obsequium.” The extraordinary self-confidence of these words is more easily explained if we consider them as aimed against the literary device of Erasmus. After the manner of the Humanists, at the beginning of his “Diatribe,” he had declared that he intended merely to enter upon an examination, a collatio (cp. διατριβή), and that he hated logical demonstrations, an exaggeration for which Luther soundly rated him in the very first pages, urging that he must be either a “frivolous orator” or a “godless writer,” if he could not take so important a question seriously (p. 120). The termination of Erasmus’s work, where he says: “Contuli, penes alios stet ultimum iudicium” (ed. J. v. Walter, p. 92), is played upon word for word in the conclusion of the “De servo arbitrio.”
[799] “De servo arbitrio,” p. 641 = 162 seq.
[800] “Quod probat eius indignatio. Hoc non fieret, si esset libera vel haberet liberum arbitrium.” The effect of egotism in man depraved by original sin is here classed by him with the enslavement of the will; he was ever given to exaggerating the strength of concupiscence. Cp. vol. i., pp. 70 f., 110 ff.
[801] P. 634 = 156.
[802] “De servo arbitrio,” p. 720 = 269.
[803] Ibid., p. 730 = 283. Here he is seeking to prove, “(Deum non) talem esse oportere, qui merita respiciat in damnandis.”