is told that his natural
reason is blinded by sin and his understanding darkened, rendering it
impossible for him to discern good and evil, and leading him constantly
into errors of judgment on what is right or wrong, while he is made to
believe that his will is enslaved by evil lusts and passions, ever prone
to wickedness and averse to godliness. As a consequence, it is claimed,
man must necessarily become morally indifferent: he will not fight
against sin nor follow after righteousness, because he has become
convinced that it is useless for him to make any effort either in the
one direction or in the other. The doctrine of man's natural depravity
and the divine foreordination of all things, it is held, must drive man
either to despair, insanity, and suicide, or land him hopelessly in
fatalism: he will simply continue his physical life in a mechanical way,
like a brute or a plant; he merely vegetates.

These fatal tendencies which are charged against Luther are refuted by
no one more effectually than by Luther himself. As regards the doctrine
of original sin and man's natural depravity, Luther preached that with
apostolic force and precision. That doctrine is a Bible-doctrine. No
person has read his Bible aright, no expounder of Scripture has begun to
explain the divine plan of salvation for sinners, if he has failed to
find this teaching in the Bible. This doctrine is, indeed, extremely
humiliating to the pride of man; it opens up appalling views of the
misery of the human race under sin. We can understand why men would want
to get away from this doctrine. But no one confers any benefit on men by
minimizing the importance of the Bible-teaching, or by weakening the
statements of Scripture regarding this matter. Any teaching which admits
the least good quality in man by which he can prepare or dispose himself
so as to induce God to view him with favor is a contradiction of the
passages of Scripture which were cited in a previous chapter, and works
a delusion upon men that will prove just as fatal as when a physician
withholds from his patient the full knowledge of his critical condition.
Yea, it is worse; for a physician who is not frank and sincere to his
patient may deprive the latter of his physical life, but the
teacher of God's Word who instils in men false notions of their moral
and spiritual power robs them of life eternal.

Luther avoided this error. He led men to a true estimate of themselves
as they are by na