active only in resisting the work of the
Holy Spirit, nor is he able to do otherwise; that such resistance
continues until he is converted and a new will and heart have been
created in him; that conversion consists in this, that men who by nature
are unwilling and resist God's grace become such as willingly consent
and obey the Gospel and the Holy Spirit; that this is done solely by
God's grace, through Word and Sacrament; that man is purely passive in
his conversion, inasmuch as he contributes nothing towards it, and
merely suffers and experiences the work of the Holy Spirit; that only
after his conversion man is able to cooperate with the Holy Spirit; that
such cooperation, however, flows not from innate powers of the natural
will, but from the new powers imparted in conversion; that also in the
converted the natural sinful will continues to oppose whatever is truly
good, thus causing a conflict between the flesh and the spirit which
lasts till death; in brief, that man's conversion and salvation are due
to grace alone and in no respect whatever to man and his natural powers.

The _Book of Confutation,_ of 1559, drafted, as stated above, by the
theologians of Jena, designates the synergistic dogma as a "rejection of
grace." Here we also meet with statements such as the following: Human
nature "is altogether turned aside from God, and is hostile toward Him
and subject to the tyranny of sin and Satan (_naturam humanam prorsus a
Deo aversam eique inimicam et tyrannidi peccati ac Satanae subiectam
esse_)." It is impossible for the unregenerate man "to understand or to
apprehend the will of God revealed in the Word, or by his own power to
convert himself to God and to will or perform anything good (_homini non
renato impossibile esse intelligere aut apprehendere voluntatem Dei in
Verbo patefactam aut sua ipsius voluntate ad Deum se convertere, boni
aliquid velle aut perficere_)." "Our will to obey God or to choose the
good is utterly extinguished and corrupted. _Voluntas nostra ad Dei
obedientiam aut ad bonum eligendum prorsus extincta et depravata est_."
(Tschackert, 523; Gieseler 3, 2, 229.)

The second of the Propositions prepared by Simon Musaeus and Flacius for
the Disputation at Weimar, 1560, reads: "Corrupt man cannot operate or
cooperate toward anything good by true motions, and such as proceed from
the heart; for his heart is altogether dead spiritually, and has utterly
lost the image of God, or all powers and inc