Genesis, especially of chapter 26. There likewise his meaning
and understanding of some other peculiar disputations introduced
incidentally by Erasmus, as of absolute necessity, etc., have been
secured by him in the best and most careful way against all
misunderstanding and perversion; to which we also hereby appeal and
refer others." (897, 44; 981, 28.) In the passage of his _Commentary on
Genesis_ referred to by the _Formula,_ Luther does not, as has been
claimed, retract or modify his former statements concerning the
inability of the human will and the monergism of grace, but emphasizes
that, in reading _De Servo Arbitrio,_ one must heed and not overlook his
frequent admonitions to concern oneself with God as He has revealed
Himself in the Gospel, and not speculate concerning God in His
transcendence, absoluteness, and majesty, as the One in whom we live and
move and have our being, and without whom nothing can either exist or
occur, and whose wonderful ways are past finding out. (CONC. TRIGL.,
898.) And the fact that the Lutheran theologians, living at the time and
immediately after the framing of the _Formula of Concord,_ objected
neither to the book _De Servo Arbitrio_ itself nor to its public
endorsement by the _Formula of Concord,_ is an additional proof of the
fact that they were in complete agreement with Luther's teaching of
conversion and salvation by grace alone. (Frank 1, 120.)

This _sola-gratia_-doctrine, the vital truth of Christianity,
rediscovered and proclaimed once more by Luther, was, as stated, the
target at which Erasmus directed his shafts. In his _Diatribe_ he
defined the power of free will to be the faculty of applying oneself to
grace (_facultas applicandi se ad gratiam_), and declared that those are
the best theologians who, while ascribing as much as possible to the
grace of God, do not eliminate this human factor. He wrote: Free will is
"the ability of the human will according to which man is able either to
turn himself to what leads to eternal salvation or to turn away from
it." (St.L. 18, 1612.) Again: "Those, therefore, who are farthest apart
from the views of Pelagius ascribe to grace the most, but to free will
almost nothing; yet they do not abolish it entirely. They say that man
cannot will anything good without special grace, cannot begin anything
good, cannot continue in it, cannot complete anything without the chief
thing, the constant help of divine grace. This opinion seems to b