We submitted in chap. 15 the Scriptural evidence on the spiritual disability of man. (The passage from Ecclesiasticus in the last quotation is not Scripture.) It is useless to argue with a person who refuses to accept this teaching of Scripture.  We can only repeat what we said before:  Let the advocates of human free will proceed to do what they claim they are able to do, and do it thoroughly.  No one will begrudge them the crown of glory when they obtain it.  On the other hand, they will have none but themselves to blame if they do not obtain it.  In the light of God’s holy Word, in the light, moreover, of the experience of the most spiritual-minded and saintly men that have lived on earth, we see in the claim of the advocates of human free will regarding the fulfilment of God’s Law nothing but a vain boast, and a most mischievous attempt to be smarter than God.  The theory of salvation by merit is the most disastrous risk that the human heart can take.  Christ has mercifully warned men not to take this risk.  If they will not hear Him, they will have to perish in their sins (John 8, 24).

In chap. 15 we also explained Luther’s views on human free will in the affairs of this life.  We only have to add a word on the subject of contingency.  Are Luther’s Catholic, critics really so blind as not to see that man even in his ordinary affairs of common every-day life is subject to the inscrutable government of God?  Our physical life in its most trivial aspects is entirely dependent not only on the laws of nature, which are nothing but the order which the Creator has appointed for the created universe, but also on extraordinary acts of God over which no man has control.  The farmer sows his wheat and expects to reap a crop.  How?  By reason of the power of germination which the Creator has put in the grain, and the laws which govern atmospheric changes, which laws, again, the Creator governs.  The farmer can do nothing to make the wheat grow and ripen.  He is utterly dependent upon God.—­A merchant decides that he will make a business trip to New York.  He will leave the next morning on the nine o’clock train.  He orders his transportation, and the next morning-he does not leave.  “Something happened; I had to change my plans,” he tells his friends.  Ah, says our Catholic critic, but was he not free to change his mind?  We say:  You may talk as much as you wish about the person’s freedom; the fact remains that the person would not have changed his mind unless he had to. — Let us follow this merchant a little further:  He actually starts on his trip two days later.  He is to arrive at his destination at two o’clock in the afternoon of the next day, and very much depends on his arriving just at that time.  But he does not even get to Cincinnati.  “Something happened,” he wires to his friend.  And now his human free will goes into operation again:  he changes his mind. — “Man proposes, but God disposes,” this belief is ineradicably written into the consciousness