If we cast a glance at the other sermons which coincide in point of time with his Commentary on Romans, we shall find in certain remarks on the regeneration of man a foretaste of his later teaching regarding free-will. He says, for instance, of the attainment of the state of grace, that here regeneration takes place not only “without our seeking, praying, knocking, simply by the mercy of God,” but also that it resembles natural generation, where the child does nothing (“_ipso nihil agente_”); no man can be born for heaven by his own operation and merits (“_sua opera suoque merito_”). He contrasts those who are generated of God “in the spirit” with those who live after the flesh, and who often “make a great show of spirituality”: they are, he says, “carnal-spiritual” and, “with their horrid, hypocritical spirituality, are doomed to destruction.”[627]
According to these sermons it is plain that God is the only worker in the man who is thus born of God. In him free-will for doing what is good does not come into account, for the good works of the righteous man are God’s works, and his virtues and excellence are really God’s. “He works all in all, all is His, He, the One Almighty Being, does all things,” so we read in Luther’s sermon on August 15, 1516, the Feast of the Assumption, i.e. at a time when by his study of the Epistle to the Romans he had been confirmed in his bias against man’s natural powers.[628]
The Wittenberg Disputation in 1516, “On man’s powers and will without grace,” immediately followed his lectures on the Epistle to the Romans; here we find it stated in plain words, that “man’s will without grace is not free, but captive, though not unwillingly.”[629] To complete what has already been said (vol. i., p. 310 ff.) we may add that the proof of this is sought in that the will sins in everything, and that, according to Scripture, “Whoever sins is the slave of sin.” We learn also from the Bible, we read, that we are then truly free when the Son (of God) makes us free. The natural man without grace is an evil tree, as such he can only desire and do what is evil. This degradation of the human will was intended to form the basis for a new appreciation of the grace and merits of Christ.