[40] Vol. i., p. 317 f. and passim.
[41] Cp. Mathesius, “Tischreden,” ed. Kroker, p. 260.—Ammon (“Hdb. der chr. Sittenlehre,” 1, 1823, p. 76) laments that Luther “regarded the moral law merely as a vision of terror,” and that according to him “the essence of the Christian religion consisted, not in moral perfection, but in faith.” De Wette, “Christl. Sittenlehre,” 2, 2, 1821, p. 280 f., thinks that an ethical system might have been erected on the antithesis set up by Luther between the Law and the Gospel and on his theories of Christian freedom, “but that Luther was not equal to doing so. He was too much taken up with his fight against the Catholic holiness-by-works to devote all the attention he should to the moral side of the question and not enough of a scholar even to dream of any connection between faith and morality being feasible.”
[42] Mathesius, ib. The Note in question is by Caspar Heydenreich.
[43] “Christl. Sittlichkeit nach Luther,” 1909, p. 91 f.
[44] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 261.
[45] Cp. the passages cited above, p. 9 ff., and vols. iii. and iv. passim.
[46] It was Luther himself who published the Antinomian theses in two series on Dec. 1, 1537. Cp. “Opp. lat. var.,” 4, p. 420 sqq. The most offensive of these theses Luther described as the outcome of Agricola’s teaching and attributed them to one of the latter’s pupils; Agricola, however, refused to admit that the propositions were his. Cp. Köstlin-Kawerau (2, p. 458), who, after attempting to harmonise Luther’s earlier and later teaching on the Law, proceeds: “He paid no heed to the fact that Agricola was seeking to root sin out of the heart of the believer, though in a way all his own, and which Luther distrusted, nor did he make any distinction between what Agricola merely hinted at and what others carried to extremes: in the one he already saw the other embodied. All this was characteristic enough of Luther’s way of conducting controversy.”
[47] “Opp. lat. var.,” 4, p. 434 (Thes. 17), 428 (Thes. 10).
[48] Mathesius, “Tischreden,” p. 352.
[49] Ib.