in chapters 9-11, because you will realize what a comfort this doctrine contains.  For the doctrine of election can be studied without injury and secret anger against God only by those who have passed through suffering, crosses, and anguish of death.  Accordingly, the old Adam in you must be dead before you can bear this subject and drink this strong wine.  See that you do not drink wine while you are still a babe.  There is a proper time, age, and manner for propounding the various doctrines of God to men.”  What is there fatalistic about this?

17.  Luther a Teacher of Lawlessness.

Luther’s teaching on the forgiveness of sin is sternly rebuked by Catholic writers because of its immoral tendencies.  They say, when the forgiveness of sins is made as easy as Luther makes it, the people will cease being afraid if sinning.

The danger of the Gospel of the gracious forgiveness of sins being misapplied has always existed in the Church.  Every student of church history knows this.  Catholic writers know this.  Paul wrestled with this practical perversion of the loving intentions of our heavenly Father in his day.  After declaring to the Romans:  “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound,” he raises the question:  “What shall we say then?  Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” He returns this horrified answer:  “God forbid!  How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” (Rom. 5, 20-6, 2.) Actually there were people in the apostle’s days who drew from his evangelical teaching this pernicious inference, that by sinning they gave the forgiving grace of God a larger opportunity to exert itself, hence, that they were glorifying grace by committing more sin.  This meant putting a premium on sinning.  For God’s sake, how can you conceive a thought like that? the apostle exclaims.  He repudiates the idea as blasphemous, which it is.  To sin in the assurance that sin will be forgiven is not honoring, but dishonoring God and His grace; it is not exalting, but traducing faith; it is not Christian, but devilish.  Summarizing the contents of Romans, chapter 5, Luther says:  “In the fifth chapter Paul comes to speak of the fruits and works of faith, such as peace, joy, love of God and all men, and in addition to these, security, boldness, cheerfulness, courage and hope amid tribulations and suffering.  All these effects follow where there is genuine faith, because of the superabundant blessing which God has conferred upon us in Christ by causing Him to die for us before we could pray that He might do this, yea, while we were yet His enemies.  Accordingly, we conclude that faith justifies without works of any kind, and yet it does not follow that we must not do any good works.  Genuine good works cannot fail to flow from faith,—­works of which the self-righteous know nothing, and in the place of which they invent their own works, in which there is neither peace, joy, security, love, hope, boldness, nor any other of the characteristics of a