igator of lawlessness was most effectually
vindicated was the Antinomian controversy. This episode, more than any
other, embittered the life of the aging Reformer. The Antinomians drew
from the evangelical teachings those disastrous consequences which the
Catholics impute to Luther: they claimed that the Law is not in any way
applicable to Christians. They insisted that the Ten Commandments must
not be preached to Christians at all. Christians, they claimed,
determine in the exercise of their sovereign liberty what they may or
may not do. Being under grace, they are superior to the Law and a law
unto themselves. At first Luther had been inclined to treat this error
mildly, because it seemed incredible to him that enlightened children of
God could so fatally misread the teaching of God's Word. He thought the
Antinomians were either misunderstood by people who had no conception of
the Gospel and of evangelical liberty, or they were grossly slandered by
persons ill-disposed to them because of their successful preaching of
the Gospel. When their error had been established beyond a doubt, he did
not hesitate a moment to attack it. In sermons and public disputations,
before the common people of Wittenberg and the learned doctors and the
students of the University, he defended the holy Law of God as the norm
of right conduct and the mirror showing up the sinfulness of man also
for Christians, and he insisted that those who had fallen into this
error must publicly recant. It was due to Luther's unrelenting
opposition that Agricola, one of the leaders of the Antinomians and at
one time a dear friend of Luther, withdrew his false teaching and
offered apologies in a published discourse. To his guests Luther in
those days remarked at the table: "Satan, like a furious harlot, rages
in the Antinomians, as Melanchthon writes from Frankfort. The devil will
do much harm through them and cause infinite and vexatious evils. If
they carry their lawless principles into the State as well as the
Church, the magistrate will say: I am a Christian, therefore the law
does not pertain to me. Even a Christian hangman would repudiate the
law. If they teach only free grace, infinite license will follow, and
all discipline will be at an end." (Preserved Smith, p. 283.) Luther
held that forbidding the preaching of the Law meant to prohibit
preaching God's truth (20, 1635), and to abrogate the Law he regarded as
tantamount to abrogating the Gospel (22, 10