HKB
pleases him so to be; he is a voluntary slave through his evil lust. Thus it is that free will and will in bondage are one and the same thing.
'Let no man say, I am tempted of God'; 'but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed' (Jas. i. 13, 14). And Satan contributes thereto. He 'blindeth the minds of them which believe not' (2 Cor. iv. 4). But man is delivered up to the Devil by his covetous desire: the pleasure he finds in evil is the bait that hooks him. Plato has said so already, and Cicero repeats it: 'Plato voluptatem dicebat escam malorum.' Grace sets over against it a greater pleasure, as St. Augustine observed. All pleasure is a feeling of some perfection; one loves an object in proportion as one feels its perfections; nothing surpasses the divine perfections. Whence it follows that charity and love of God give the greatest pleasure that can be conceived, in that proportion in which one is penetrated by these feelings, which are not common among men, busied and taken up as men are with the objects that are concerned with their passions.
Now as our corruption is not altogether invincible and as we do not necessarily sin even when we are under the bondage of sin, it must likewise be said that we are not aided invincibly; and, however efficacious divine grace may be, there is justification for saying that one can resist it. But when it indeed proves victorious, it is certain and infallible beforehand that one will yield to its allurements, whether it have its strength of itself or whether it find a way to triumph through the congruity of circumstances. Thus one must always distinguish between the infallible and the necessary.
The system of those who call themselves Disciples of St. Augustine is not far removed from this, provided one exclude certain obnoxious things, whether in the expressions or in the dogmas themselves. In the expressions I find that it is principally the use of terms like [298] 'necessary' or 'contingent', 'possible' or 'impossible', which sometimes gives a handle and causes much ado. That is why, as Herr Loescher the younger aptly observed in a learned dissertation on the Paroxysms of the Absolute Decree*, Luther desired, in his book *On the Will in Bondage, to find a word more fitting for that which he wished to express than the word necessity. Speaking generally, it appears more reasonable and more fitting to say that obedience to God's precepts is always possible, even for the unregenerate; that the grace of God is always resistible, even in those most holy, and that freedom is exempt not only from constraint but also from necessity, although it be never without infallible certainty or without inclining determination.