Luther maintained “that man is devoid of freedom; that every (pretended) free action is only apparent; that an irresistible divine necessity rules all things, and that every human act is actually only an act of God.”
Luther claimed the human will is like a beast of burden: “If God mounts it, it wishes and goes as God wills; if Satan mounts it, it wishes and goes as Satan wills; nor can it choose the rider it would prefer, or betake itself to him, but it is the riders who contend for the possession.” (O’Hare, The Facts about Luther, 266).
In “Luther’s Works”, Vol. 1, p 264, Luther states: “Now this book ought really to have a title [to indicate] that it was written against the free will. For the entire book tends to show that the counsels, plans, and undertakings of men are all to vain and fruitless, and that they always have a different outcome from that which we will and propose.” “Where does freedom of the will come in?” he asks, as it follows from the Apostle’s teaching that “the keeping of the law is simply impossible” He hesitates, it is true, to deny free will, but only for a moment, and then tells us boldly that the will has been robbed of its freedom (of choosing) good. “Had I said this, people would curse me,” but according to him, it is St. Paul who advocates the doctrine that without grace there is no freedom of the will in the choice of good which one pleases God. Here we have a foretaste of the doctrine Luther was to express at the Leipzig disputation and elsewhere, vis, that the freedom of the will for good is merely a name, and of that later terrible thesis of his that free will in general is dead, a thesis he defended more particularly against Erasmus.