Early Reformers

As mediated by late Scholasticism, however, Aquinas's common law legacy found a mixed reception among the early reformers. Although Martin Luther (1483-1546) acknowledged that there is a (natural) law written on the human heart, he regarded the corruption of reason by Sin in particular, by the sinful will to self-justification, to be such as to render that law almost entirely obscure to sympathetic view. Besides, Luther's confidence in the ability of Faith to generate loving, moral conduct freely and spontaneously inclined him to deny the need for Christians to be instructed by law of any kind (that is, the need ...