but necessarily serves sin, should nevertheless charge
this to free will; and that, when He does not confer the Spirit, He
should not act a whit more kindly or more mercifully than when He
hardens or permits men to harden themselves. Reason will declare that
these are not the acts of a kind and merciful God. These things exceed
her understanding too far, nor can she take herself into captivity to
believe God to be good, who acts and judges thus; but setting faith
aside, she wants to feel and see and comprehend how He is just and not
cruel. She would indeed comprehend if it were said of God: 'He hardens
nobody, He damns nobody, rather pities everybody, saves everybody,' so
that, hell being destroyed and the fear of death removed, no future
punishment need be dreaded. This is the reason why she is so hot in
striving to excuse and defend God as just and good. _But faith and the
spirit judge differently, believing God to be good though he were to
destroy all men_." (E. 252; St. L. 1832.) "The reason why of the divine
will must not be investigated, but simply adored, and we must give the
glory to God that, being alone just and wise, _He does wrong to none,
nor can He do anything foolish or rash, though it may appear far
otherwise to us. Godly men are content with this answer_." (E. 153; St.
L. 1714.)

According to Luther, divine justice must be just as incomprehensible to
human reason as God's entire essence. We read: "But when we feel ill at
ease for the reason that it is difficult to vindicate the mercy and
equity of God because He damns the undeserving, _i.e._, such ungodly men
as are born in ungodliness, and hence cannot in any way prevent being
and remaining ungodly and damned, and are compelled by their nature to
sin and perish, as Paul says [Eph. 2, 3]: 'We were all the sons of wrath
even as others,' they being created such by God Himself out of the seed
which was corrupted through the sin of the one Adam,--then the most
merciful God is to be honored and revered in [His dealings with] those
whom He justifies and saves, although they are most unworthy, and at
least a little something ought to be credited to His divine wisdom by
believing Him to be just where to us He seems unjust. For if His justice
were such as could be declared just by human understanding, it would
clearly not be divine, differing nothing from human justice. But since
He is the one true God, and entirely incomprehensible and inaccessible
to human re