Chapter VII · (continued 2)
E. M. Lamond translation
With an unbounded confidence in himself and all too well aware of the seduction exercised by his splendid talents, he yet does not scruple to warn others with the utmost seriousness against their “inclinations to arrogance, avarice and ambition,” and to represent pride as the cardinal sin.[792] He is keen to notice defects in earlier theologians, but an unhappy trait of his own blinds him to the fact that the Church, as the invincible guardian of truth, must soon rise up against him.
He has already discovered a new way of salvation which is to tranquilise all, and yet he will be counted, not among those who feel sure of their salvation, but among the pious who are anxious and troubled about their state of grace, “who are still in fear lest they fall into wickedness, and, therefore, through fear, become more and more deeply steeped in humility in doing which they render God gracious to them.”[793] The assurance of salvation by faith alone, the sola fides of a later date, he still protests against so vigorously, that, when he fancies he espies it in his opponents in any shape or form, he attacks them as “a pestilential crew,” who speak of the signs of grace and thereby, as he imagines, lull men into security.
The last words show that the process of development is not yet ended. What we have considered above was merely the first of the two stages which he traversed before finally arriving at the conception of his chief doctrine.[794]