e
pretty probable because it leaves to man a striving and an effort, and
yet does not admit that he is to ascribe even the least to his own
powers." (1619.) One must avoid extremes, and seek the middle of the
road, said Erasmus. Pelagius had fallen into Scylla, and Luther into
Charybdis. "I am pleased with the opinion of those who ascribe to free
will something, but to grace by far the most." (1666.) Essentially,
this was the error held, nursed, and defended also by the Synergists,
though frequently in more guarded and ambiguous phrases. But their
theory of conversion also involved, as Schaff and Schmauk put it, "the
idea of a partnership between God and man, and a corresponding division
of work and merit." (_Conf. Principle,_ 600.)

However, these attempts to revamp the Semi-Pelagian teaching resulted in
a controversy which more and longer than any other endangered and
disquieted the Lutheran Church, before as well as after the adoption of
the _Formula of Concord._ Whether the unregenerate man, when the Word of
God is preached, and the grace of God is offered him, is able to prepare
himself for grace, accept it, and assent thereto, was, according to the
_Formula of Concord,_ "the question upon which, _for quite a number of
years now,_ there has been a controversy among some theologians in the
churches of the Augsburg Confession." (881, 2.) And of all the
controversies after Luther's death the synergistic controversy was most
momentous and consequential. For the doctrine of grace with which it
dealt is the vital breath of every Christian. Without it neither faith
nor the Christian religion can live and remain. "If we believe," says
Luther in _De Servo Arbitrio,_ "that Christ has redeemed men by His
blood, then we must confess that the entire man was lost; otherwise we
make Christ superfluous or the Redeemer of but the meanest part of us,
which is blasphemous and sacrilegious." Reading the book of Erasmus, in
which he bent every effort toward exploding the doctrine of grace,
Luther felt the hand of his opponent clutching his throat. In the
closing paragraph of _De Servo Arbitrio_ Luther wrote: "I highly laud
and extol you for this thing also, that of all others you alone have
gone to the heart of the subject.... You alone have discerned the core
of the matter and have aimed at the throat, for which I thank you
heartily.--_Unus tu et solus cardinem rerum vidisti, et ipsum iugulum
petisti, pro quo ex animo tibi gratias ago