Free will?

This is a lively and vigorous refutation from Martin Luther to Erasmus on the subject of free will. If Luther were invited to speak at a debate today, he would be removed within 5 minutes for rudeness, I'm quite sure.

"Uncertainty is the most miserable thing in the world." (69)

"Surely your rhetoricians teach that he who would speak about a subject should first say whether it exists, then what it is, what its parts are, what is contrary to it, allied to it, like it, and so on? But you deprive poor 'free-will' of all these advantages, and settle no single question relating to it save the first, i.e. whether it exists (and we shall see how worthless your arguments on that point are) - so that aq more incompetent book on 'free-will' (apart from the elegance of its language) I never saw!" (pg 79)

"God foreknows nothing contingently, but that He foresees, purposes, and does all things according to His own immutable, eternal and infallible will. This bombshell knocks 'free-will' flat, and utterly shatters it.... Do you suppose that He does not will what He foreknows, or that He does not foreknow what He wills? If He wills what He foreknows, His will is eternal and changeless, because His nature is so. From which it follows, by resistless logic, that all we do, however it may appear to us to be done mutably and contingently, is in reality done necessarily and immutably in respect of God's will.... Since, then His will is not impeded, what is done cannot but be done where, when, how, as far as, and by whom, He foresees and wills." (pg 80)

I excerpt these to show how closely Luther and Calvin were in thought. Both followed logic and held strong views of God's providence and sovereignty.