You say that a flood-gate of iniquity is opened by our doctrines. So be it. Ungodly men are part of that evil leprosy aforementioned, which we must endure. Nevertheless, these are the very doctrines which throw open to the elect, who fear God, a gateway of righteousness, an entrance into heaven, and a road to God! If, as you advise, we should keep off these doctrines and hide the word of God from men, and leave them all to labour under a false assurance of salvation, never learning the fear of God and true humiliation, and so never coming through that fear to true, saving grace and love—why, then we should have shut our flood-gate to some purpose; for in its place we should set open before ourselves and everyone else broad gates, yes, gaping chasms and raging whirlpools, to take us down not only into sin, but into the very depths of hell! Thus we too should fail to enter heaven ourselves, and hinder others who were entering (cf. Matt. 23:13). (Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will).
Erasmus was fearful that if the doctrines of grace and of the enslaved will were taught a lot of sin would result. Luther did not see that as a problem as such, but that these are the doctrines who throw open the Gospel to the elect and show the road to God. Luther did not see it as a problem at all to boldly teach the enslaved will of man and the grace of God because that taught men the truth. It stripped some of their false assurance of salvation whereas the method of Erasmus hid the word of God from men and left them in their false assurance of salvation. Not only that, they would never learn the true humiliation of the soul and so never coming to the point of really understanding and bowing to saving grace and love.
Luther believed that a soul must be thoroughly humbled before it could be saved. It must be emptied of all hope in self and to despair of any hope that self could contribute one thing to salvation. In many ways coming to the experiential part of that is what total depravity applied to the soul really is. It is relatively easy for souls to come to an understanding of what total depravity means, but it is impossible for the soul to come to the point of utter helplessness in itself and looking to grace alone apart from grace doing the work in the soul. The soul must be emptied of self so that it can be filled with Christ. As long as we do not teach the truth about the enslaved will we will not be preaching to souls what they need to experientially understand in the depths of their souls about themselves and then learn of true grace and love.
It may be the case that some people will misunderstand and misapply what it means to have an enslaved will and what it means to be saved and sanctified by grace alone. But that cannot mean that the truth should be withheld or hidden from people. The truth must be preached for the Gospel to be preached. The Gospel will always be ridiculed and made fun of. But the Gospel of grace alone must be preached because that is the only Gospel that there is and the one and only God is the One that shines forth His glory in the Gospel. People who hate the truth will be hardened to it, but that says nothing evil about the truth itself. The position of Erasmus was that of a moralist who believed that external morality was what was good. But in Scripture the Pharisees were external moralists and they were lost. Jesus was accused of many things as well, but He kept on preaching the truth. Indeed the truth will harden people and God will blind many to the truth, but the truth must be preached. When man pares down the truth of the Gospel to make it more palatable to the ungodly, the truth and glory of the Gospel is gone.
Whenever the truth of God is hidden from people in order to produce an external morality, a false way of salvation is presented to souls. That means that the fallen hearts of human beings will find refuge in false gospels and error. It is, to use the thought of Luther, to shut the gates to some immorality but it is also to open the gates wide to hell. It would be to hide the truth of the Gospel and of true morality and leave men in a religious morality which is a form of morality that God hates. What happens, then, is that a gate to a form of immorality is shut but it opens other gates that are far worse. Man’s way always does that. Another problem is that not only does it shut the door to heaven (so to speak) for others, but it also means that the preachers are preaching a false gospel and are shutting the door on themselves as well. Hiding this truth has massive ramifications for eternal souls and His glory.
There is no good reason to hide the truth of God from human souls. Those who hide the truth of the enslaved will from others are guilty of hiding a very important truth that is necessary to understand the Gospel of Christ alone and of grace alone. Sure some think that this is going too far, but according to Scripture souls are saved by grace and grace alone. Anything necessary to that is a necessary teaching. We had best not hide it from people.
God Loves... Himself 
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