 In the second part of his text, Luther turns to Erasmus’s introduction, where Erasmus had questioned Luther’s position on the grounds that few of the saints, Church fathers, and scriptural authorities have adopted a view of this sort. Luther’s response is that while these authorities may have said there is free choice, in their actions they have not shown they possess it, while they also have all conceived of it in rather different ways, so it is not clear that there is any consensus here at all—and at the same time, Luther argues that the all-important figure of Augustine is on his side, not Erasmus’s as the latter had claimed. Given this confused picture, Luther concludes that as a result, the matter must be settled by appeal to scripture alone, and not by appeal to the authority of previous commentators, or of the Church. Luther thus proceeds to the first main part of Erasmus’s text, in which Erasmus had offered a number of biblical passages that he claimed to support the idea of free choice.