Proofread for CRTA by Michael H. Woolsey - 3/15/2001

ARTICLES

Extracted from the Latin, as well as the French, Books of John Calvin on

PREDESTINATION.

ARTICLE I.
(THAT IS, CALUMNY I.)
GOD OF HIS PURE AND MERE WILL CREATED THE GREATEST PART OF THE WORLD TO PERDITION.

CALUMNIATOR'S STATEMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS.

Therefore, God created all men in love, not in hatred." And again, " No beast is so cruel (to say nothing of man) that it would desire to create its young to misery. How much less, then, shall such a desire be found in God! Would not God in such a case of creation be less kind and merciful than the wolf which He has created? " Christ argues in this way: " If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall God? " (Matt. vii. 11.) It is just thus that your adversaries argue. They say, If Calvin, though an evil man, yet would not wish to beget a child unto misery, how much less shall God desire to do so? These and like arguments your opponents bring forward with respect to nature.

But with reference to the Scripture they reason thus: God saw that " all things " which He had made were " very good." Such therefore was man, whom also He had made " very good." But what if God created him to destruction? If such be the case, God created that which " was very good " to destruction and perdition, and therefore He must love to destroy! But that is a thing impious, even in thought. And again, they argue: God created one man and placed him in Paradise, which is a life of happiness. Therefore God created all men for a happy life, for all men were created in the one man. And if all men fell in Adam, it follows that all men stood in Adam, and also in the very condition in which Adam stood. And further, God says, " I would not the death of a sinner;" and again, it is written that God " willeth not that any should perish, but that all men should come to the knowledge of the truth " ( 1 Tim. ii. 4). Farther, if God created the greatest part of the world to perdition, it follows that His anger is greater than His mercy, and it consequently follows also that His anger is strewn " unto the third and fourth generation." Whereas, " it is evident, on the contrary, that His mercy extends " even unto the thousandth generation ! "

REPLY OF JOHN CALVIN TO ARTICLE I. (THAT IS, CALUMNY I.) AND TO THE CALUMNIATOR'S OBSERVATIONS THEREON.

In the next place, although my doctrine is that the will of God is the first and supreme cause of all things, yet I everywhere teach that wheresoever in His counsels and works the cause does not plainly appear, yet that there is a cause which lies hidden in Himself, and that according to it He has decreed nothing but that which is wise and holy and just. Therefore, with reference to the sentiments of the schoolmen concerning the absolute, or tyrannical, will of God, I not only repudiate, but abhor them all, because they separate the justice of God from His ruling power. Now see, then, thou unclean dog, how much thou hast gained, and how far thou hast advanced thy cause by this thy impudent barking. For myself, while I subject the whole human race to the will of God, I at the same

time ever affirm that God never decrees anything but with the most righteous reason, which reason (though it may at the present time be unknown to us) will assuredly be revealed to us at the last day in all its infinite righteousness and Divine perfection.

You thrust in my face, and impudently upbraid me with, the " pure and mere will of God," which idea I, in a hundred or more passages of my books, utterly repudiate. Meantime, I freely acknowledge my doctrine to be this: that Adam fell, not only by the permission of God, but by His very secret counsel and decree; and that Adam drew all his posterity with himself, by his Fall, into eternal destruction. Both these positions, it seems, give you great offence, as being (according to your account) " contrary to nature, and to the Scripture." You attempt to prove it to be contrary to nature, because every animal naturally loves its own offspring; whence you argue that, therefore, God, who gave such a natural affection to brute beasts, ought not, certainly, less to love all men, seeing that they are His offspring. Your argument and thought are infinitely too coarse and low, and infinitely beneath the mightiness of the matter, when you demand of God, the eternal Author of nature, just what He rightfully demands of the ox and the ass, which He has created. As if God Himself ought to be bound by the same laws as those which He has appointed for the creatures which He has made ! That every animal might propagate its own kind, He has implanted in each animal the desire of that propagation. Go thou, then, and expostulate with God, and ask Him how it is that from all eternity He has remained content with Himself, and has retained His own native excellency and glory barren, as it were, and unpropagated ! God ought certainly ever to be consistent with Himself. If thou, therefore, art to be our judge in the mighty and stupendous matter, God has violated the order by choosing rather to be without all offspring, than to exercise His fruitfulness!

Moreover, as all brute beasts fight for their offspring, even unto death, how is it (according to your doctrine) that God permits His helpless offspring to be torn in pieces and devoured by tigers, and bears, and lions, and wolves? Is it because His hand is too short, so that He cannot stretch it down out of heaven for their defence ! See you not how wide a field lies open to me, if I were inclined to expose and condemn all your idle and absurd reasonings! ! But I will content myself with dwelling on one point only, and let that suffice. Proofs of the love of God towards the whole human race exist innumerable, all which demonstrate the ingratitude of those who perish or come " to perdition." This fact, however, forms no reason whatever why God should not confine His especial or peculiar love to a few, whom He has, in infinite condescension, been pleased to choose out of the rest!

When God was pleased to adopt unto Himself the family of Abraham, He thereby most plainly testified that He did not embrace the whole of mankind with an equal love. When, again, God rejected Esau, the elder, and chose Jacob, the younger brother, He gave a manifest and signal proof of His free love, of that love with which He loves none others than those whom He will ! Moses declares aloud that one certain nation was beloved of God, while all nations beside were passed by and disregarded as to any peculiar love of God for them. The prophets everywhere testify that the Jews exceeded and surpassed all other nations in excellency and importance, for no other reason than because God freely loved them.

Again, Christ is not addressing the whole human race, nor indeed the whole Jewish nation, but God's little chosen flock alone, when He says, and not in vain, " Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." (Luke xii. 32) By which Christ intimates that none experience the favour of God unto the hope of eternal life but those whom He has rendered acceptable and well-pleasing

unto Himself by His only-begotten Son ! But if you are determined to make God subject to the laws of nature, you must necessarily accuse and condemn Him of injustice, because, on account of the fault of one man, we are all involved in the guilt and desert of eternal death. One man sinned, and we are all dragged to punishment. And not that only, but by the pollution of one we are all drawn into the contagion, and are born corrupt and infected with a deadly disease. What have you to say to this noble Teacher and Judge? Will you accuse the blessed God of cruelty, because He has thus precipitated all His offspring into ruin by the Fall of one man? For although Adam destroyed both himself and all his offspring, yet the corruption and the guilt of that Fall of one man must necessarily be ascribed to the secret counsel and decree of God ! For the fault of one man could have had nothing to do with us, had not our heavenly Judge been pleased to consign us to eternal destruction on the account!

Now only reflect, for a moment, how craftily you apply those passages of the prophet Isaiah as a covering for your error (Isa. liv. 1; xlix. 19-21, etc.). As it seemed beyond all belief that the Church of God, in her Babylonish captivity, being not only bereft of her children, but also barren in her power to produce more, should, by the recovery of her strength, become even more fruitful than she was before, God in these passages speaks, as it were, thus to her: " Am not I, by whose power women conceive and bring forth, able to raise up an offspring to thee also? " Because God speaks thus to His Church, you, under this pretext, would force Him to assume the affections of any kind of animal. And you daringly reason that, because God causes all animals to love their own offspring, He also loves all His own offspring, namely, the whole race of mankind. And suppose, for a moment, that l grant you this; it will not, therefore, at once follow that God loves His own in the same manner as beasts love their own. And, in the next place, if God does

love His own, it does not the less follow that He has a right to reject, as a just Judge, those to whom He had in vain shown His love and indulgence throughout their whole lives as the kindest Father.

But you are ready to reply, next, that " to create is a work of love, not of hatred; and that God therefore created in love, not in hatred." But you perceive not, that though all men are hateful to God in fallen Adam, yet that in their original creation the love of God shines in all its brightness. That argument, therefore, which you think is so very plausible, any other person, endowed with the most moderate judgment, and with common equity, acknowledges in a moment to be frivolous and vain. That which you next add, I do not consider it my duty so much to refute, as to cut down at once with the stroke of the sword. It is indeed evident that men are born to misery. But is the cause of this to be imputed to my writings? Whence arises this miserable condition of us all, that we are subject not only to temporal evils, but to eternal death? Does it not arise from the solemn fact that, by the Fall and fault of one man, God was pleased to cast us all under the common guilt? In this miserable ruin of the whole human race, therefore, it is not my opinion only that is plainly seen, but it is the work of God Himself that is so openly undeniably manifest.

Meantime, you hesitate not to vomit forth your profane and abhorrent opinion that God is worse than any wolf, who thus wills to create men to misery. Some men, be it remembered, are born blind, some deaf, some dumb, some of monstrous deformity. Now, if we are to go by your opinion as the judge in these sacred and deep matters, God is also cruel, because He afflicts His offspring with such evils as these, and that, too, before they have seen the light. But the day, be thou assured, will come when thou wilt heartily wish that thou hadst been blind, rather than thou hadst ever been so wonderfully sharp-sighted in thus penetrating into these secrets of the eternal God !

You accuse God of injustice; nay, you declare Him to be nothing above a monster, if He dares to decree anything concerning men otherwise than we ourselves should determine concerning our own children. If so, how shall we account for God's creating some dull of comprehension, others of greater incapacity, others quite idiots? Do you really think that the work of God's creation, with reference to such imperfect mortals, was really according to the fables of some Jews about the Fauns and Satyrs? For they say that God was prevented from completing the form of these latter monsters by the intervention of the Sabbath, and therefore that they fell, half made, from His hands. No ! It rather becomes us to receive a deep and humbling lesson from such sad spectacles as these defective human beings, and not to commence a quarrel with the Maker of heaven and earth, from the conceptions of our own brain, concerning His works, or what, in our opinion, they ought to have been. When any idiot happens to meet me, I am admonished to reflect upon what God might have made me, had He been so pleased! As many dull of comprehension and idiots as there are in the world, so many spectacles does God set before me in which to behold His power; not less a subject of awe than a subject of wonder.

But as for you, you brawl against God Himself with all impiety and profanity, as " being less merciful than a wolf," because (according to your opinion) He has so little considered the good and happiness of His offspring! Now, before the saying of Christ -- " that God, because He is good, acts more kindly towards His children than men do, who are evil " ( Matt. vii. 11) -- can be called in to favour your opinions and arguments, you must prove that all men are equally the children of God. But it is evident that all men lost in Adam eternal life, and that, therefore, the adoption of God is an act of special grace; whence it will follow that all those are the rather hated of God who are thus estranged and alienated from Him. All the

testimonies of the Scripture which you cite are mere javelins, hurled at random by the hand of a madman, as where you quote that word. " And God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good" (Gen. i. 31). For from this text you conclude that man was also " very good." And from this you next infer that God was unjust in creating that which was " good " to perdition.

In what sense, however, man was created upright by nature I have explained in many parts of my writings. Man certainly was not better than the devil was, before the latter lost his angelic uprightness. And now, suppose I were to cede to you for a moment that both men and apostate angels were created unto salvation, and yet that God, having respect to their future Fall, condemned both to eternal destruction, what would you gain from this concession to help you in supporting your arguments? God most certainly knew what would take place, both in men and in apostate angels, and He also decreed at the same time what He Himself would do.

With reference to the doctrine of permission, we will speak of that hereafter in its place. But for the present, if you should be disposed to reply that the foreknowledge of God is not the cause of evils, I would only ask you this one question: If God foresaw the destruction both of man and of the devil before He created them, and did not, at the same time, decree their destruction, why did He not apply, betimes, an adequate remedy, which should prevent their Fall and their liability thereto? The devil, from the very beginning of the world, alienated himself from the hope of salvation. And man, as soon as he was created, destroyed both himself and his posterity with a deadly destruction. If, therefore, the preservation of both was in the hand of God, how was it that (if He had not decreed their destruction) He permitted their ruin? Nay, why did He not furnish each with at least some small degree of ability to stand? To what circuitous

reasonings soever, therefore, you have recourse I shall be able to hold you fast to this principle, that although man was created weak and liable to fall, yet- that this weakness contained in it a great blessing, because man's Fall immediately afterwards taught him that nothing out of God is either safe, or secure, or enduring. Hence, therefore, it is made evident that all which you prate about men having been created unto salvation, is an argument mutilated and halt, and laid down without adequate consideration. For the truth is, that when I am confessing that there was nothing in man, when created, contrary to salvation, I am thereby and therein proving that salvation was predestinated for all men.

Let me repeat this same argument very briefly in other words. What I mean is, that if we argue on that perfection of nature with which Adam was gifted at his first creation, we may say that he was created unto salvation, because in that perfectness of his first created state there was found no cause of death. But if we carry the question up to God's secret predestination, we are met by that deep abyss which ought at once to transport us into wonder and admiration. The fact is, that had you but been gifted with the least feeling of godly reverence, you would, in a moment, acknowledge that this is not a question concerning the completeness of man's original perfection, but concerning the will of God and the decree of God. The state of the sacred case is as if the Holy Spirit had said to you, " Nothing of excellency was wanting in any of the creatures at their creation; but rather, all occasion was taken away from you, and from all like you, of contending against God." For how loudly soever you and yours may deny that there was any " good " in man being so created and conditioned, as that he should, by his immediate Fall, destroy himself and the whole world, yet God Himself declares that such a condition of things pleased Him! Therefore, it was most just and righteous.

And that you may the more correctly understand Moses, he does not (remember ! ) declare how upright and perfect man was, but that he might stop the barkings of all dogs, like yourself, he teaches that the whole order of the Creation was so tempered of God, that nothing more just or more perfect can be imagined. Wherefore, when Moses comes to speak of all the several works of God collectively, he says that " God saw everything that He had made, and behold it was very good" (Gen. i. 31). But Moses affirms no such thing concerning man, individually, specially and absolutely, in every sense. Having narrated man's creation also, the sacred historian concludes by saying, in words which apply generally to the whole creation, that all the things which God had made were " very good," in which words are doubtlessly to be comprehended, as in harmony with them, the words of Solomon also, where he affirms that the wicked were created " for the day of evil." " The Lord hath made all things for Himself; yea, even the wicked for the day of evil" (Prov. xvi. 4).

Take, then, the sum of the whole matter to be this: though man, at his first creation, was in his newly created nature " good," yet this rectitude, which was weak, frail and liable to fall, militates not against, nor stands in contrariety with, the predestination of God, by which predestination it was that man perished by his sin and fault, though his nature was by creation pure. Nay, looking at, and arguing from, his primitive natural excellency, man was created in this view and sense to salvation. And yet, from this very line of argument, you vainly, absurdly and preposterously infer that man was created " good " that he might perish, though " good " or as a good man. Whereas, it is openly and undeniably manifest that he perished by his infirmity and sin; and, therefore, that he perished as one liable to righteous condemnation and destruction. And how these two propositions and positions agree

and harmonise with each other we will show hereafter, as we have indeed shown again and again before.

Here you throw in the common objection " that God has no pleasure in the death of a sinner," as declared by the prophet Ezekiel (Ezek. xxxiii. 11). But listen, I pray you, to that which, in the prophet, immediately follows, " Because God inviteth all men to repentance" (Ezek. xviii. 30-32). To all such, therefore, as return into the way of life pardon is freely offered. But the next and principal thing to be considered herein is, whether or not that conversion or " returning " which God requires (ver. 30) is in the power of man's free-will, or whether it be a peculiar and sovereign gift of God! Inasmuch, therefore, as all men are invited and exhorted by God to repentance, the prophet, on that ground, justly declareth that God " hath no pleasure in the death of a sinner." But why it is that God doth not turn or convert all men to Himself, equally and alike, is a question the reply to which lies hidden in Himself. And as to your usual way of citing that passage of the apostle Paul, " That God would have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. ii. 4), how vain a prop that is to put under your error to support it, I think I have shown with sufficient plainness already, and that repeatedly. For it is (so to speak) more certain than certainty itself that the apostle is not, in that passage, speaking of individuals at all, but of orders of men in their various civil and national vocations. He had just before commanded that the public prayers of the Church should be offered up for kings and others in authority, and for all who held magisterial offices, of what kind and degree soever they may be. But as nearly all those who were then armed with the sword of public justice were open and professed enemies to the Church, and as it might therefore seem to the Church singular or absurd that public prayers should be offered up for them, the apostle meets all objections, so very natural, by admonishing the

Church to pray even for them also, and to supplicate God to extend His grace and favour even to them, for the Church's quiet, peace and safety.

There is, perhaps, a stronger colour in some of the words of Peter, which might have better suited your purposes, where he says that God is " not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance " ( 2 Pet. iii. 9). And if there be anything in the first member of the passage that seems difficult of comprehension at first sight, it is made perfectly plain by the explanation which follows. For, in as far as God " willeth that all should come unto repentance," in so far He willeth that no one should perish; but, in order that they may thus be received of God, they must " come." But the Scripture everywhere affirms, that in order that they may " come," they must be prevented of God; that is, God must come first to them to draw them; for until they are drawn of God, they will remain where they are, given up to the obstinacy of the flesh. Now if there were one single particle of right judgment in you, you would, in a moment, acknowledge that there is a wide and wonderful difference between these two things -- that the hearts of men are made of God "fleshly" out of "stony" hearts, and that it is thus that they are made to be displeased and dissatisfied with themselves, and are brought, as suppliants, to beg of God mercy and pardon; and that after they are thus changed, they are received into all grace.

Now God declares that both these things are of His pure goodness and mercy; that He gives us hearts that we may repent, and then pardons us graciously upon our repentance and supplication. For if God were not ready to receive us when we do truly implore His mercy, He would not say, " Turn ye unto Me, and I will turn unto you" (Zech. i. 3). But if repentance were in the power of the free-will of man, Paul would not say, " If peradventure God will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth " (2 Tim. ii.

26). Nay, if God Himself, who exhorts all men to repentance by His voice -- if God Himself, I repeat, who thus exhorts, did not draw His elect by the secret operation of His Spirit, Jeremiah would not thus de. scribe those who do return: " Turn Thou me, and I shall be turned; for Thou a the Lord my God. Surely after that I was turned, I repented" (Jer. xxxi. 19). This solution of the matter ( I repeat,) if there were any shame or modesty in so impudent a dog as thyself, ought to have been known to thee as existing in my writings in a hundred different places. And although thou mayest take it upon thyself to reject such a solution, it nevertheless stands supported and confirmed both by the apostle Paul and by the prophet Ezekiel.

But how, and in what sense it is, that God willeth all men to be saved is a matter not here to be inquisitively discussed. One thing is certain, that these two things -- salvation and the knowledge of the truth -- are always inseparably joined together. Now, then, answer me, If God had willed that His truth should be known unto all men, how is it that, from the first preaching of the Gospel until now, so many nations exist unto whom His pure truth has never been sent by Him at all, and unto whom, therefore, it has never come? And, again, if such had been the will of God concerning all men, how is it that He never opened the eyes of all? For the internal illumination of the Spirit, with which God has condescended to bless so few, is indispensably necessary unto faith. And there is also another knot for thee to untie. Since no one but he who is drawn by the secret influence of the Spirit can approach unto God, how is it that God does not draw all men indiscriminately to Himself, if He really " willeth all men to be saved" (in the common meaning of the expression)?

It is, therefore, an evident conclusion, flowing from this discrimination which God makes, that there is, with Him, a secret reason why He shuts so many out from

salvation. How it is, therefore, that the mercy of God is shown unto the thousandth thou wilt never (as long as the pride by which thou art inflated shall blind and blunt thy faculties) acknowledge. For no such mercy is promised as that which shall utterly abolish the curse under which the whole race of Adam lieth; but such a mercy is promised as shall (where all naturally existing obstacles are removed) break forth and endure for ever, upon the most unworthy.

In this manner it was that God passed by many of the children of Abraham! when He chose the one of them, Isaac. So also, when the twin sons of Isaac were born, the same God willed that His mercy should rest on one of them only, namely, on Jacob. And again, although God shows forth proofs of His wrath in many, it nevertheless remaineth eternally true that He is " abundant in goodness " and " slow to anger "; and hence, in that very longsuffering with which He endures the reprobate, there shineth forth no dim refulgence of His great goodness. Only observe, therefore in what an effectual manner thy frivolous and captious objections, from which I can disengage myself in a moment, entangle, ensnare and imprison thyself !

In order to make the mercy of God greater than His anger, you will have more to be chosen to salvation than to destruction. And suppose I should for a moment cede this to you, what greater glory will thereby be secured to God? None whatever. God will nevertheless be as unjust as ever to those few who are lost (if your calumnies are to be received and believed). Unless God love all His created offspring alike, you will still profanely and awfully pronounce Him to be less kind and merciful than a wolf ! Nay, let there be but one only against whom God shall righteously exercise His wrath, how shall He escape or avoid the accusation of cruelty in your blind and unholy judgment ! Farther still, you will not even allow, as exceptions from the impious and profane

charges of cruelty in God, that there are gross provocations of His Divine wrath in the men themselves ! But, comparing alone wrath with mercy, you merely contend for the magnitude of the one or the other. Just as if God, by choosing more to salvation than to destruction, would thereby, and thereby alone, prove Himself to be a merciful God ! God, however, commends the greatness of His grace to us in a manner far different from this. He not only pardons so many, and such various sins, in His elect, but even contends with, and bears with, the obstinate malice of the reprobate, until it has filled up the measure of its iniquity (Matt. xxiii, 32).

ARTICLE II.
(THAT IS, CALUMNY II.)
GOD NOT ONLY PREDESTINATED EVEN ADAM TO DAMNATION, BUT TO THE CAUSES OF THAT DAMNATION ALSO, WHOSE FALL HE NOT ONLY FORESAW, BUT HE ALSO WILLED BY HIS SECRET AND ETERNAL DECREE AND ORDAINED THAT HE SHOULD FALL, WHICH FALL, THAT IT MIGHT, IN ITS TIME, TAKE PLACE, GOD PLACED BEFORE HIM THE APPLE, WHICH SHOULD CAUSE THAT FALL.

CALUMNIATOR'S OBSERVATIONS AND STATEMENTS ON ARTICLE II.

REPLY OF JOHN CALVIN TO ARTICLE II., &c., &c.

But not to wrangle about words, I willingly, and in a moment, confess that what I have written is this: " That the Fall of Adam was not by accident, nor by chance; but was ordained by the secret counsel of God." And this is the doctrine which you positively pronounce to be " the doctrine of the devil." You are, in your own eyes, I know, a judge of the highest authority, and therefore it is that, in your self-conceit, you imagine that you can, by five words of the foulest abuse, knock down that firm fabric of truth which I have erected, and which I have supported by the most impregnable arguments. You call upon me to produce a testimony from the Scriptures, from which it is manifest that Adam fell not, but by the secret decree of God. But had you read even a few pages of my writings with any attention, that sentiment of mine could not have escaped you which everywhere occurs in my books -- that God governs all things by His secret counsel and decree. You ascribe a prescience to God after your own fashion, representing Him as sitting in heaven an idle, inactive, unconcerned spectator of all things in the life of men. Whereas, God Himself, ever vindicating to Himself the right and the act of holding the

helm of all things which are done in the whole world, never permits a separation of His prescience from His power ! Nor is this manner of reasoning mine only, but most certainly Augustine's also. " If (says that holy father) God foresaw that which He did not will to be done, God holds not the supreme rule over all things. God, therefore, ordained that which should come to pass, because nothing could have been done bad He not willed it to be done."

If you judge this to be absurd, you will be just as far off as before, and will fall back into the same confusion into which you fell by making my doctrine to be " the doctrine of the devil." For you ought to have applied that remedy for your evil case, which might have been ready at your hand. But that you did not this, nor could do it, is perfectly plain. You might have thought thus, " God foresaw the Fall of Adam. It was in His power to have prevented it if He would. But He did not will to do so. Why did He not will to do so? No other reason can be assigned for His not willing to do so than that His will had quite another bent, or inclination." But, if you will permit yourself to enter into a contention with God, you had better profanely accuse Him at once and condemn Him, for having so made man of constitutional frailty as to leave him liable to fall, and that into eternal ruin on the account ! But you will reply that Adam fell by his own free-will. My reply to you in return is, that Adam had need of being gifted with that fortitude and constancy with which the elect of God are gifted whom God wills to " keep " sound and safe " from falling " ( Jude 24) .

Most certain it is that if fresh strength were not supplied to us from heaven every moment, such is our liability to fall, that we should perish a thousand times over. But God supplies all those whom He hath chosen with an invincible fortitude, by which they are so holden up as to " persevere unto the end." How was it, then, I again ask, that God did not bestow this

same fortitude and perseverance on Adam, if He had willed that he should stand fast and in safety? Here, most assuredly, every mouth must be silent and dumb, or, all must confess with Solomon, that " God hath made all things for Himself; yea, even the wicked for the day of evil " (Prov. xvi. 4). If this offend you as being an absurdity, think within yourself whether the Scriptures declare so often in vain that the judgments of God are " a great deep." If it were possible for us to measure the incomprehensible counsel of God by the standard of our own human capacity, Moses would have said in vain: " Secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever" (Deut. xxix. 29).

You demand of me to cite the place in the Holy Scriptures by which I prove that God did not prevent the Fall of Adam, because His will was not to prevent it. Just as if that memorable reply of God to all such inquiries and inquirers did not contain in itself an all-sufficient proof: " I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy." From which the apostle Paul at once concludes, and justly so, that God hath not mercy upon all, because He wills not to have mercy upon all. And most certainly these words, without the aid of any interpreter, plainly and loudly declare that God is not bound by any law that should compel Him to show mercy unto all men indiscriminately and alike; but that He is the Lord of His own will, to impart pardon to whom He will and to pass by others as He will. It is, moreover, certain that God was the same then as now, when the prophet said of Him, " He doeth according to His will " (Dan. iv. 35). If, therefore, God permitted the Fall of Adam against His will (as you would have it), you will next say that He was overcome by Satan in the conflict; and thus you will make, like the Manichees, two ruling principles. But Paul, pleading also this great cause of God, compares Him (and that soberly and solemnly) to a potter,

who could of his own will form of the same mass vessels of different kinds as he pleased. Now the apostle might have begun his argument, had he been so led, from sin. But he does not so. He commences the mighty subject by defending the free right of God from the very beginning of His glorious workmanship, even from His secret, eternal and sovereign will. And where he afterwards adds, " That all were concluded under unbelief," does he teach that this took place contrary to, or without, the will of God? Does he not, on the contrary, teach that God was the author of that state of unbelief? If you reply that all were condemned to unbelief as they deserved, the context will not admit even that interpretation, because Paul is there speaking of the secret judgments of God. And that solemn exclamation of his directly militates against such an interpretation, " O the depth !" etc. Wherefore, as God, from the beginning, predestinated Christ to succour those who were lost, so by His inconceivable and inestimable counsel He decreed a way by which He might manifest forth His glory by the Fall of Adam.

I willingly confess that where God is vindicating the free course of His mercy, He speaks of the whole human race generally, which had already perished in Adam; but this same view and consideration held good before Adam fell, that His will was then all-sufficient to show mercy when and as He pleased. Moreover, this His eternal will, though it depends on none and on nothing but Himself, nor has any prior cause to influence it, is nevertheless founded in the highest reason and in the highest equity. For though in the case of men they require a law to rein and restrain their intemperateness, it is far otherwise with God. He is His own law -- a law unto Himself ! And His will is the highest rule of the highest equity.

ARTICLE III.
(THAT IS, CALUMNY III.)
THE SINS WHICH ARE COMMITTED, ARE COMMITTED NOT ONLY BY THE PERMISSION, BUT EVEN BY THE WILL OF GOD. FOR IT IS FRIVOLOUS TO MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE PERMISSION OF GOD AND THE WILL OF GOD, AS FAR AS SIN IS CONCERNED. THEY WHO ATTEMPT TO MAKE THIS DIFFERENCE MERELY ATTEMPT TO GAIN GOD OVER BY FLATTERY.

CALUMNIATOR'S OBSERVATIONS AND STATEMENTS ON ARTICLE III.

Your adversaries adduce, moreover, many conspicuous examples of this discrepancy between the will of God and His permission, especially from Ezekiel xx., where God, after He had reproved His people very fully and severely for not obeying His commandments, at last concludes with these words: " Go ye; serve ye every one his idols, and hereafter also, if ye will not hearken unto Me" (Ezek. xx. 39). As if God had said, " I permit you to serve your own lusts, since ye will not obey My precepts." And this, indeed, seems to be exactly the same as that which He had said in the former part of the same chapter: " Because they despise My statutes, therefore I gave them also statutes that were not good" (vers. 24, 25). Now God did not in reality, we are assured, give unto the Israelites statutes that were not, in themselves, good, for all the statutes of God are good. But because they despised the good precepts of God, He forsook them; and they being thus forsaken of God, fell away into evil statutes, just as that prodigal son, being forsaken by his father, or rather having forsaken his father, fell into luxury and every evil. Thus also Paul teaches that because men did not love the truth, God sent upon them strong delusions, that they might believe a lie. Of the same description also seems to be that passage of Amos iv.: " Go ye to Bethel, and transgress, for this liketh you" (vers. 4, 5). So it is also in the present day (as in the case of thyself and thy disciples). As men would not obey God, who saith that He hateth sin, therefore God hath permitted spirits of delusion such as yours to exist, who teach that God willeth sin, that they who would not obey the truth might be left to obey a lie.

Your opponents adduce that passage from Zechariah, where God says He was angry with the nations that were at ease, because, when He was lightly angry with the Israelites, they helped forward the calamity; that is, they afflicted the Israelites more grievously than the anger of the Lord against them required or could

endure. This was, therefore, done by the permission, not by the will, of God. They produce also a similar example from the prophet Obed, who reproves the people of Israel because they oppressed the people of Judah more heavily than the anger of the Lord required. They bring forward also the example of the prodigal son, concerning whom, if thou sayest that he ran into riotous living by the will of his father, it will be the greatest possible absurdity. The son, therefore, thus acted by the permission of the father. In the same way also thy opponents affirm that the wicked are prodigal sons of God, and that they sin, not by the will, but by the permission of God. They refer, moreover, to that saying of Christ, " And ye, will ye also go away? "

Christ most certainly did not will that they should go away, but He permitted them so to do. They argue, finally, from the nature of common sense, which dictates that there must be a difference between willing and permitting. And they affirm that it was according to common sense that Christ taught Divine things; and that if thou take away common sense from His teaching all His parables must fall at once, for it is by common sense that those parables are to be judged of and understood.

REPLY OF JOHN CALVIN TO ARTICLE III., AND TO CALUMNIATOR'S STATEMENTS.

honestly? In the vast cause now before us, I affirm that to make a difference between the permission and the will of God is, indeed, " frivolous." But you interpose a witty and clever argument as you imagine though it is an empty sophism. If all things are done by the will of God, God (you assert) wills things which are contrary in nature and in principle, which is proved (you maintain) by saying that I really am a prophet of the devil, while I affirm that I am a true servant of God. This appearance of contradiction is that which dazzles and blinds your eyes. But God Himself, who well knoweth in Himself how it is that He willeth that same thing in one sense which is contrary to His will in another, pays no regard whatever to your dullness of understanding and stupidity. As often as God called forth the true prophets, He most certainly willed that they should contend zealously and earnestly in declaring the doctrine of the law. Upon this there secretly rose up false prophets, who strove to overthrow that doctrine. That there should be a conflict, therefore, between the true and false prophets was inevitable. But God did not therefore contend with or contradict Himself, though He willed that both these true and these false prophets should come forth. You obtrude upon me the long-suffering of God. But God, on the other hand, declares that no false prophets arise, but those whom He ordains to be such, either to prove the faith of His own people, or to blind the unbelieving. " If there arise among you a false prophet (saith Moses), your God proveth you by that prophet" (Deut. xii. 1, 3). Now you, by a most perverse and preposterous comment, transfer to some other that which Moses ascribes expressly to God. Therefore, either deny at once that God searches the hearts of His people, or else admit that which is the evident and indubitable truth: that false prophets are instruments of God, by which He proves, as by a touchstone, that of which He will have Himself acknowledged to be the author. But Ezekiel sets this forth

still more clearly and remarkably: " And if the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out My hand upon him, and will destroy him from the midst of My people Israel" (Ezek. xiv. 9).

You would have us to rest content with the permission of God only. But God, by His prophet, asserts that His will and His hand are in the whole matter as the moving cause. Now just consider, then, which of the two is the more worthy to be believed, God, who by His Spirit, the only fountain of truth, thus speaks concerning Himself; or you, prating about His hidden and unsearchable mysteries out of the worthless knowledge of your own carnal brain? What ! when God calls in Satan for His purposes, as the instrument of His vengeance, and openly gives him commandment to go and deceive the prophets of Ahab, does this positive command differ nothing from a mere permission? The voice of God contains in it no ambiguity whatever. " Who (saith God) will go and deceive Ahab for me? " Nor does God command Satan in any obscure manner. Go thou and be a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets " ( 1 Kings xxii. ). Now I wish to know from you whether the doing a thing is the same as the permitting it to be done? When David had secretly abused the wife of another man, God declares that He will cause all David's wives to be dragged forth, to make an example of the same disgraceful sin openly in the sight of the sun. God does not say, " I will permit it to be done," but " I will do it." But you, in your wondrous defence of God (as you think), would aid Him by your fallacious help in thrusting forward your imaginary permission! How very differently does David think and act ! He, while revolving in his mind the fearful judgment of God, exclaims, " I was dumb, because Thou didst it !" In like manner Job blesses God, and confesses that he was plundered by the robbers, not only through the permission, but by the will and act of God; for he plainly affirms " that it

was the Lord who gave, and that it was the Lord who took away," what He had Himself given. If, upon your authority, giving and receiving are to be understood in the same way as willing and permitting, riches so considered are not blessings actually bestowed of God, but they fall into our hands at random by the permission of God. But if you and your foul band should continue thus to cry out against God until doomsday, He will nevertheless, in due time, fully justify and vindicate Himself. But as for us, we will adore with all reverence those mysteries which so far surpass our comprehension, until the brightness of their full knowledge shall shine forth upon us in that day when He. who is now seen " through a glass darkly," shall be seen by us "face to face." " Then (saith Augustine) shall He be seen in the brightest light of understanding that which the godly now hold fast in faith. How sure, certain, immutable and all-efficacious, is the will of God ! How many things He can do which He yet wills not to be done; but that He wills nothing which He cannot do ! "

With reference, however, to the present ARTICLE, I will answer you from the mouth of the same godly writer. " These (saith he) are the mighty works of the Lord; exquisitely perfect according to every bent of His will. And so perfect in exquisite wisdom, that when both the angelic and the human natures had sinned -- that is, had done, not what God willed, but what each nature willed, even by a like will, in each creature -- it came to pass that what God, as the Creator, willed not, He Himself accomplished according as He had willed; thus blessedly using, as the God of perfect goodness, even evils to the damnation of those whom He had righteously predestinated unto punishment, and to the salvation of those whom He had mercifully predestinated unto grace. For, as far as these transgressing natures were themselves concerned, they did that which God willed not; but with respect to the Omnipotence of God, they could by no means have done what

they did without it, nor without its concernment therein. For by the very act of their doing that which was contrary to the will of God, they were themselves thereby fulfilling the will of God. Wherefore, these mighty works of God, exquisitely perfect, according to every bent of His will, are such that, in a wonderful and ineffable way, that is not done without the will of God which is even done contrary to His will, because it could not be done at all, unless He permitted it to be done; and yet, He does not permit unwillingly, but willingly. Nor, as the God of goodness, would He permit a thing to be done evilly, unless, as the God of Omnipotence, He could work good even out of the evil done."

As to the testimonies of the Scripture which you adduce, they have no more to do with the present mighty question and cause, than oil has to do with wine to make a mixture, or to dilute the one with the other. God, speaking to the Jews by the prophet Ezekiel, and addressing them as disobedient, says: " Go ye; worship every man his own idols." This, I openly profess, is not the voice of God commanding or exhorting, but of God rejecting an impious mixture of worship -- a worship by which the Jews had profaned His sanctuary. Now what else can you conclude from this passage, but that God sometimes permits that to be which He disapproves and condemns? As if it were not evident to all that God sometimes commands and sometimes permits by the same forms of expression. God says in the Law, " Six days shalt thou labour." Here is a permission. For sanctifying every seventh day to Himself, He leaves the other six free to men. In a manner somewhat different also He permitted of old divorce to the Jews, which He nevertheless by no means approved. In the present case, recorded by the prophet Ezekiel, He gives up the double-minded and the perfidious to idols, because He will not suffer His name to be polluted. But how is it that you have forgotten, here, that all this is wrought by the " Secret Providence

of God," by which He ordains and turns to the accomplishment of His own purposes all the movements and tumults of the world, according to His own will? Moreover, corrupting vainly and ignorantly as you do that other passage (Ezekiel xx. 24, 25), you evince how everything sacred is disregarded by an impure and profane person like yourself. The words of God are, " Because they despised My statutes, I gave them precepts that were not good." Here you trifle by observing that when they were forsaken of God they fell into idolatry. But God undoubtedly means that the Jews were given over to the Chaldeans into slavery, and that the Chaldeans, who were idolaters, were oppressing them by their tyrannical laws.

But our question now is, whether God merely permitted the Jews to be thus dragged into exile by the Chaldeans, or whether He used the latter as rods, chosen by Himself, wherewith to scourge the Jews for their sins? For if you will still make the doctrine of mere permission a pretext, you might as well commit all the prophets to the flames at once, who at one time declare that Satan was sent by God to deceive, and at another that the Chaldeans or Assyrians were sent by God to destroy; and who, at the same time, assert that God " hissed for " the Egyptians, that He might use their might in punishing His people, and at another that the Assyrians were His hired soldiers; that Nebuchadnezzar was His servant in plundering Egypt, and that the Assyrians were the " axe " in His hand and the " rods " of His anger in utterly devastating Judaea. I do not multiply, as I might do, kindred examples, lest I should exceed all moderate bounds of proof ( Isa. x. 5).

Nor is your inebriated audacity the less manifest, where you would vainly make it appear that God's sending " strong delusions " on the unbelieving, that they might believe a lie, means that He permits false teachers to exist; and that, as He permitted the prodigal son to fall into riotous living when he had deserted his father, so He permits His prodigals to fall into error

and delusion when they forsake Him. And when you spout forth all this folly, you imagine that your readers are so blind that they do not see things to be quite otherwise in the words of Paul, where he says, " God shall send upon them strong delusions, that they might believe a lie" (2 Thess. ii. 11). But it is no marvel whatever that he should prate thus, at will and at random, who imagines that there are no judgments of God at all, or who does not know what the judgment means, or holds it in perfect contempt if he does. For no man who is not insane would say that a judge had no hand in the judgment of the wicked, or that he would sit down in unconcern and leave others to perform that duty which belonged properly to himself alone.

You attempt, however, by your barking, either to frighten me or to provoke me, when you say that by the permission of God spirits of error and delusion exist, who teach that God wills sin. But as this same reproach was cast in the teeth of the apostle Paul himself, why should I grieve or complain at being a partaker of the same reproach with him? You adduce a passage from the prophet Zechariah, where the nations are described as punishing God's people beyond the extent which His wrath required. Are you, then, really such a simpleton as not to believe that there was protection enough in God to prevent this excess of His people's affliction by their enemies, and to have made their punishment less, had He been pleased, or had He willed so to do? You reply that the words of the prophet intimate this excess of punishment. But you must be twice or thrice dipped in stupidity, if you perceive not that God tries the patience of His people in a marvellous manner by the severest proofs, sometimes in one way and sometimes in another, and that He is often, at the same time, offended by the insolence of their enemies, where He sees them become too much elated with their victories, and when they insult and cruelly use the conquered. Nay, your foolish comments and reasonings fall to the ground of their own

accord, directly militating against and mutually destroying each other. For the truth and fact must be, either that God positively commanded those profane nations, or He merely permitted them, to gently chastise His people. If you reply that He commanded them to do so, I then obtain the conclusion that, though these neighbouring enemies were, without cause, afflictive to the miserable exiles who dwelt with them, yet, that they would have been without blame if they had not exceeded due bounds in their cruel treatment of them as the conquered and as captives. For who would attribute that to them as iniquity which they had done at God's command?

But you are labouring all the time to establish a difference between the permission of God and His command, thus making it appear that though God commanded their enemies to inflict punishment on His people, yet it was by His permission only that they exceeded all due bounds in the punishment they inflicted. In this same way of reasoning the Israelites also were deserving of censure, for they also afflicted their brethren of Judah more severely than the wrath of God against them (according to your reasoning) required. But your insanity blinds you so far as to cause you to assert that they would have been free from all guilt and blame if they had been moderate in their vexation of their brethren. For I have to bring you back again and again to this point: that the Israelites sinned, not only because (by the permission of God as thou imaginest) they exercised too great severity towards their brethren, but because they took up arms against them at all. You, however, hesitate not to declare that there was no sin in their commencing war against their brethren, because God was angry with the people of Judah, and Himself armed the Israelites, that they might execute His vengeance upon them at His own command. Whereas I maintain that the Israelites sinned in a twofold sense: first, because they had themselves no intent or desire to do the will

Of God, although they were really the instruments of His vengeance; and secondly, because their atrocity itself proves that they were destitute of all sense of equity. Nay, at the very outset you betray your shameless ignorance in your pretending that men, as far as they are themselves concerned, err and fall by the permission of God. Whereas, such a representation of the sacred matter is impious and profane. It is making God to give permission to men to do evil in reference to their own actions, as considered in themselves; while the reality and truth are, that God severely prohibits and solemnly forbids the doing of anything that is contrary to His commands. But why God of His will permits men to do wrong; nay, why God by His secret decree gives men over to evil, whom He nevertheless commands to continue in the right way; it becomes our sobriety and modesty of mind to remain willingly ignorant. To search into this profound secret insolently as you do is rashness, audacity and madness !

How cleverly and appropriately you interpret that passage where Christ (as you make it appear) permits His disciples to go away (John vi. 67), learn from the following reality of the case. When Christ, referring to those who had gone away, turns to His disciples and says to them, " Will ye also go away? " He is positively exhorting them to persevere and continue with Him. For, asking them in grief whether they also would go away, He puts, as it were, a gentle rein upon them to prevent them from falling away with apostates. And is this, I pray you, the manner in which you convert all such forms of speech as these into permissions? Common sense does, I acknowledge, at first sight, take to command to be one thing, and to permit to be another. But the fact is, that this difference, or this sameness, is not the real question at issue. The question between us is, whether God, in unconcern and inactivity, merely observes, as an uninterested, unconcerned and idle spectator, all the things

that are done upon earth; or whether, from His all-high throne, He rules, overrules and governs, by His Divine command, every single action of the sons of men? Or, if the term permission gives you so much satisfaction and pleasure, answer me this question: Does God permit things to be done willingly or unwillingly? That God permits unwillingly is positively denied by Psalm cxv. 3: " The Lord hath done whatsoever He willed " (or, " whatsoever He hath pleased "). If, therefore, God permits willingly, to represent Him as sitting on His throne as a mere unconcerned and unengaged spectator, is utterly profane. Wherefore it follows that God determines and rules by His counsel whatsoever He wills to be done. But you are for bringing, with child's talk, this sublime mystery of God down to the rule and measure of common sense!

And as to your objecting and arguing, on the other hand, that Christ so taught all the Divine lessons of His teaching, as to accommodate Himself to the capacity of people of common sense; Christ Himself flatly denies this, and convicts you at once both of lying and of impudence in the matter. Hear you not Christ Himself declaring that He spoke in " parables," to the very end, that the common people, or people in general, " might hear, and yet not understand "? It is, indeed, quite true that the Holy Spirit does, for our sakes, everywhere speak in a certain manner, as a nurse would speak to children; but this is a widely different matter from representing, as you do, that common sense is a capable and competent judge of those profound doctrines, which exceed in their incomprehensibility the capacity of angels. Paul proclaims aloud that " the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them" ( 1 Cor. ii. 14). He therefore admonishes all those to become fools, and to resign all their own wisdom, who would profit in the heavenly school. In a word, God everywhere vindicates to Himself as His own all true light of understanding. Indeed, both days and

volumes would fail me, if I were to attempt the accumulation of those testimonies of Scripture which condemn common sense as perfect darkness, for they are numberless, and they all declare that light can be obtained from heaven alone, and that whosoever would be wise in the things of God, and of his own salvation, must renounce all his own wisdom, how much human light soever it may contain. I will content myself, therefore, with one example only. God willed not that the doctrine of the Gospel should be preached unto the Gentiles, and He withheld it from them even until the coming of Christ. And therefore it is, that the apostle calls the Gospel " the mystery that was hidden from ages;" nay, that was unknown to the angels themselves in heaven ( Col. i. 26; 1 Peter i. 12).

Notwithstanding such testimonies as these, however, you will persist in thrusting upon us the sufficiency of common sense, which, by its own natural will and judgment, subverts this very doctrine of the apostle altogether. For you will grant nothing to be even probable, but that of which common sense may be the estimator, arbiter and judge. Whereas the prophet, when speaking of the secret Providence of God, exclaims, " O Lord, how great are Thy works ! and Thy thoughts are very deep" (Psalm xcii. 5). But you, on the contrary, deny that anything is divine but that which you can measure by the rule of your own reason. What becomes, then, of the remonstrance of the apostle, when he is discussing the mighty question now before us? Why doth he make the appeal, " Nay, but who art thou, O man? " And again, what meaneth his wonder and admiration, " O the depth ! " " How unsearchable," etc., etc.? The apostle commands us to wonder and be astonished, because, whenever we come to the incomprehensible counsel of God, all mortal senses and powers fail before it. Whilst you, all the time, will admit nothing that you cannot see with your own natural eyes !

ARTICLE IV.
(THAT IS, CALUMNY IV.)
ALL THE CRIMES THAT ARE COMMITTED BY ANY MAN WHATSOEVER ARE, BY THE OPERATION OF GOD, GOOD AND JUST.

CALUMNIATOR'S OBSERVATIONS AND STATEMENTS ON ARTICLE IV.

REPLY OF JOHN CALVIN TO ARTICLE IV., AND TO CALUMNIATOR'S OBSERVATIONS, STATEMENTS, &C., &C.

In the case of this FOURTH ARTICLE, also, you go on grossly lying as before, of which fact I would, at the outset, cautiously warn my readers, and for this reason, that they may form their judgments from the reality of the case rather than from your foul calumnies. Nor do I so much condemn your objections in them-

selves, as indignantly complain that by altering and perverting my words, you malignantly wrest what I did say, for the purpose of fanning the flame of hatred against my doctrine, which doctrine is far different from your false representations of it. You enter into a quarrel with me, as if I had said, " that sin was a just, or righteous, work of God," which doctrine, and the idea of it, I hold throughout my writings in the utmost detestation. Wherefore, the greater the cleverity of argument you imagine yourself to possess, the greater is your real puerility. You arrive in your argument on this mendaciously stated FOURTH ARTICLE, at the conclusion that righteousness is evil, and that unrighteousness is good; and that God, as the author and (as you awfully state) the doer of sin, is unjust in punishing that which is His own work. Whereas, all these monstrous profanities are the fabrications of your own brain ! And all such enormities of profaneness I have ever most carefully, and with abhorrence, condemned and refuted in all my writings.

You yourself, however, will one day find, to your sorrow, how abhorrent a crime it is to trifle and lie in this manner concerning the secret mysteries of God ! And that you may clearly understand that you are not dealing with me in this your war against the truth, but with the supreme judge of heaven Himself, whose tribunal, you may be assured, you can never escape, listen to that which Job testifies -- and certainly under none other influence than the inspiration of the Holy Spirit -- that the doings of Satan, and of the robbers who plundered him, were the works of God Himself. And yet Job never, in the extremest idea, charges God with sin. No such most distant intimation is found in the patriarch. On the contrary, he blesses God's holy name for what He had done by Satan and by these robbers (Job i. 21). So also when the brethren of the innocent Joseph sold him to the Ishmaelites, the deed was evidently a most wicked one. But when Joseph ascribes this to God as His work,

so far is he from imputing sin to God, that he considers and lauds His infinite goodness, because that, by this very means, He had given nourishment to his father's whole family (Gen. xlv.). Again, when Isaiah declares that the Assyrian is the " staff of God's wrath" in His righteous hand, by which He was about to work that terrible slaughter by means of the same Assyrian (Isa. x. 15), the prophet thereby makes God the author of that awful destruction, yet without the least imputation of sin to God, or the most distant idea of it. In like manner, when Jeremiah curses those who do the work of God negligently (Jer. xlviii. 10), the prophet, by " the work of the Lord," means all that cruel destruction which their enemies wrought upon the Jews. Go then, therefore, and expostulate with the prophet, and declare to him that he has made God to commit sin. In a word, all who are in the least acquainted with the Scripture, know full well that a whole volume might be made of like passages of the Holy Scriptures, where God is made the author, as commander, of the evil and cruel deeds done by men and nations. But it is utterly vain to spend more words upon a subject so well known and self-evident.

Was it not a signal manifestation of the grace of God when He spared not His own Son? Was it not an equally marvellous exhibition of grace in Christ when He delivered up Himself? Now wilt thou really here affirm, with thy foul and profane mouth, that God sinned in thus ordaining the deed of this crucifixion of His Son and in ordaining the men also who should do the deed? (Acts iv. 28.) Was God's work of the offering up of His only begotten Son a sin in Him? O no ! All godly persons very easily untie this knot, as Augustine does in the following clear and striking manner: --

" When the Father gave up the Son, when the Lord gave up His own body, when Judas delivered up the Lord, how was it that, in this one same ' delivering up,' God was righteous and man guilty? The

reason was that, in this one same thing which God and man did, the motive was not the same from which God and man acted. Hence it is that Peter without hesitation declares that Pontius Pilate and Judas, and the other wicked people of the Jews, had done ' what God's hand and His counsel had afore determined to be done' (Acts iv. 28), as Peter had just before said, ' Him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God' (chap. ii. 23)." Now if you turn your back on the term " foreknowledge," the definitiveness of the terms, " determinate counsel," will floor you at once. Nor indeed does the former passage leave the least degree of ambiguity behind it, namely, that Pontius Pilate and the Jews, and the wicked people, did " whatsoever God's hand and His counsel had before determined to be done." Now if your understanding cannot hold a mystery and a secret so deep as these, why do you not wonder and exclaim with the apostle Paul, " O the depth ! " why do you daringly trample upon them as an infuriated madman? Had you been of a teachable mind, you would have found in my writings explications of this deep matter far more copious that I can here repeat. My present object is only to blunt the edge of your impudence, that it might not disturb the minds of the weak.

ARTICLE V.
(THAT IS, CALUMNY V.)
NO ADULTERY, THEFT, OR MURDER, IS COMMITTED WITHOUT THE INTERVENTION OF THE WILL OF GOD. (" Institutes," chap. xiv. 44.)

ARTICLE VI.
(THAT IS, CALUMNY VI.)
THE SCRIPTURE OPENLY TESTIFIES THAT EVIL DOINGS ARE DESIGNED, NOT ONLY BY THE WILL, BUT BY THE AUTHORITY, OF GOD.

CALUMNIATOR'S STATEMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS.

REPLY OF JOHN CALVIN TO ARTICLES V. AND VI., AND TO THE CALUMNIATOR'S STATEMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS THEREON.

In the case of this FIFTH ARTICLE, it is not without the peculiar intervention of the providence of God that you have pretended to give the reference to the passage

in my " Institutes," from which you falsely assert it is extracted. In this instance, readers will see that I state these things in these articles (that is, calumnies), which my adversaries bring against my doctrines, just as, and as faithfully as, if they themselves stated them.

Now seizing, as you do, upon this mutilated passage, do you not deserve that everyone who passes you should spit in your face? And though you do not attempt to offer any reference in the case of the SIXTH ARTICLE, yet your real audacity takes a wider leap still. Now tell me, did I, who in all my writings so reverently and solemnly declare that whenever and wherever sin is mentioned the Name of God should be kept in all solemnity wide out of the way; did I ever, or anywhere, assert that " evil doings were perpetrated, not only by the design, but by the authority of God"? Most certainly nothing can be uttered too powerful or too severe in condemnation of such monstrous blasphemy. I am willing to hear all that you or any men can say in its abhorrence. Let not my name, therefore, ever be associated with its horrible profanity.

How successful you are in deceiving fools I know not, but of one thing I am certain: that if anyone will just take the pains to compare your foul inventions with my genuine writings, your dishonesty and wickedness will leave you painted in your true and execrable colours. You profanely contend that if God loves sin, He must hate righteousness; and you utter many things in the same line of profanity. And why do you utter them, but that you might be forced at last to subscribe, under your own convictions, to my written doctrines? For not yesterday only, nor the day before yesterday, but for these many years past, I have written and spoken concerning Job thus: If in the spoliation of that patriarch: by robbers, the work of God, and of Satan, and of the plunderers, were one and the same in the act abstractedly considered, how

is it that God is clear of all that fault (as He sacredly is), of which fault Satan and the robbers are guilty? Why, it is thus: If, in the actions of men, an entire difference exists when the motives and ends of those actions are duly considered, so that the cruelty of that man is condemned who barbarously pierces the eyes of a crow, or the sacrilege of him who kills a crane (a bird held in so much religious veneration among the ancients>, while the sentence of that judge is lauded who sanctifies his hands by putting to death a murderer; why should the position of God be held inferior to that of man? Why should not His infinite righteousness vindicate Him, and hold Him separate from a participation in the guilt of evil-doing men? Only let readers cursorily observe what I am now about to subjoin. Nay, let them carefully read the whole of that part of my " Institutes" where I am discoursing on the Providence of God, and he will, in a moment, see all thy cloudy-minded objections discussed, exposed, answered and refuted.

Let readers consider also, if they please, what I have written in my Commentary on the Second Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. Men (I have there shown), when they commit theft or murder, sin against God because they are thieves and murderers, and because, in their theft and in their murder, there is wicked design. But God, who makes sovereign use of their wickedness, stands in an infinitely different, and in an all-high position above all men, and acts, and things. And the objects and ends of God are infinitely different from, and higher than, those of men. God's purpose is, by the wicked acts of men, to chastise some and to exercise the patience of others. Hence, in all these His uses of the evil doings of men, God never deviates in the remotest degree from His own nature; that is, from His own infinitely perfect rectitude. If, then, an evil deed is thus to be estimated according to its end and object, it is fully manifest that God is not, nor can be, the author of sin !

The sum of the whole great matter is this: Since an evil will, in men, is the cause of all and every sin, God, in performing His righteous counsels by the hands of men, is so far from being involved in the same sin and fault with men, that in a marvellous manner He causes, by their means, the light of His glory to shine forth out of darkness. And, indeed, in that very book of mine, " On the Providence of God," which lighted up all these very flames of the deepest pits of hell against me, there will be found continually occurring the distinctive declaration that nothing is more impious or more preposterous than to drag God into a participation of sin or guilt with man, while He is performing His secret judgments by means of the hands of men and of the devil, because there is no affinity whatever between the motives and ends of God and those of men and devils. But there was published by me, more than twelve years ago, a book which clearly vindicates both me and my doctrine from all these foul calumnies, and which ought to preserve me free from all this present trouble also, if there were but one spark of honesty or humanity either in yourself or your fellows. But with reference to that mad and impious dream of the Libertines, concerning God being the author of sin, which fascinated so many, how fully I have refuted that horrible idea I will not now boast. Most certainly I undertook to defend the cause of God therein purposely, and I proved with all possible clearness that God was not, in any sense, or degree, or manner whatever, the author of sin.

ARTICLE VII.
(THAT IS, CALUMNY VII.)
WHATSOEVER MEN DO WHEN AND WHILE THEY SIN, THEY DO ACCORDING TO THE WILL OF GOD, SEEING THAT THE WILL OF GOD OFTEN CONFLICTS WITH HIS PRECEPT.

CALUMNIATOR'S OBSERVATIONS AND STATEMENTS.

If you reply to these arguments of your adversaries by asserting that God has a twofold will -- the one open and manifest, the other secret -- they next inquire: Who was it, then, that made this secret will known to Calvin? For if Calvin and his followers know this secret will, it cannot be secret; and if they know it not, how dare they affirm that which they know not?

Your opponents again inquire whether God commands according to His will when He enjoins His people to pray, " Thy will be done;" and where Christ also saith, " He that doeth the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother and sister and mother " (Mark iii. 35)? There is also that passage of Paul, " Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, and knowest His will, and approvest that which is excellent, and art a teacher of the law" (Rom. ii. 17). Surely we have here the will of God, and that which is commanded in the law, which will, if it be good (which it certainly is), it must necessarily follow that that which is contrary thereto is evil; for whatsoever is contrary to good must be evil. There is, moreover, that memorable ejaculation of Christ, " How often would I have gathered thy children together, . . . but thou wouldest not." Christ most certainly speaks here of the open or manifest will of God, namely, that will which He ( Christ) Himself had explained in so many ways. Now, if Christ had in His mind another will of God contrary to this will, His whole life must have been a contradiction.

REPLY OF JOHN CALVIN TO ARTICLE VII., AND TO THE CALUMNIATOR'S OBSERVATIONS, STATEMENTS, &C., &C.

I am utterly unconcerned to make to this SEVENTH ARTICLE any reply at all. Produce me the place in my writings where I have asserted that " the will of God is frequently at variance with, or conflicts with,

His precept." Such an idea never entered my mind; no, not even as a dream. Nay, on the entire contrary, among many other kindred explanations, I have faithfully expounded and set forth how simple and uniform, and one, the will of God is; although, between the secret coursel of God and His general doctrine, there is, to ignorant and inexperienced persons, at first sight, a certain appearance of difference. But whosoever modestly and soberly and reverently submits and commits himself to God and His teaching will, in a moment, see and acknowledge (as far as the human mind's capacity can see and acknowledge it) how it is that God, who forbids adultery and fornication, punishes by the incestuous intercourse of Absalom with the wives of David, David's sin of adultery with the wife of Uriah. God ever wills one and the same thing, but frequently in different forms. Wherefore, that the foulness of your lies may not cast any filth on me or my doctrine, let my readers receive in one word this solemn declaration: that that which you cast in my teeth, as promulgated by me concerning the two wills of God, is an entire fiction of your own. For, as to myself, I have ever proclaimed that there is between the secret or hidden counsel of God and the openly revealed voice of His doctrine, the most perfect, divine and consummate harmony.

Augustine did, indeed, by way of concession and explanation to his adversaries, make mention of a twofold will, or of different wills of God -- a secret will, and an open or revealed will -- but he so represented that twofold will as to show that they are in such consummate harmony with each other, that the " last day" will make it most gloriously manifest that there never was, nor is, in this multiform way of God's workings and doings, the least variance, conflict or contradiction, but the most divine and infinite harmony and oneness.

Having laid down this solemn principle and taken this immovable stand, I will now, if thou wilt have it

so, draw swords with thee in battle for the truth. Thou arguest thus: " If God forbids a man to do that which He really wills him to do all the time, or if He commands to do that which He really wills not, He must command for the very purpose that His will might be resisted." Now, in none of all this filth of argumentation are either myself or my doctrines the least concerned. I acknowledge nothing whatever of the profane sentiments to which it refers to be mine. On the contrary, the sum of my doctrine is this: that that will of God, which is set forth in His Law, clearly demonstrates that righteousness is His delight, and that iniquity is His hatred; and also, that it is most certain that He would not denounce punishment against evil doers, if their evil doings pleased Him. This, however, by no means prevents God from willing, by His secret and unexplicable counsel, that those things should be done, in a certain sense and manner, which He yet wills not to be done, and which He forbids to be done.

If you will here raise the objection, that I make God inconsistent with Himself, I, in return, would ask you whether it belongs to you to prescribe a law or a bound for God, forbidding Him to do anything that surpasses your judgment and comprehension? Moses declares aloud that " the secret things of God belong unto Himself alone; but that whatsoever things are useful for man to know are revealed in the Law" (Deut. xxix. 29). Will you, therefore, deny God the right of doing anything but that, the reason of which you can fully comprehend and explain? After the depth of the counsel of God, which engulfs all human capacities of comprehension, has been fully declared in the Book of Job, the sublime description closes with this significant intimation, " Lo! these are parts of His ways; but how little is heard of Him ! " (Job xxvi. 14). But as for you, you will not permit God to have any counsel to Himself, but that which you can as plainly see as a thing which you behold with your natural

eyes. You are more than blind, however, if you cannot see that when God, by His voice, forbids you to commit adultery, His will is that you should not be an adulterer; and yet, that He, the same great God, exercises His righteous judgments in those same adulteries which He condemns, which righteous judgments He most certainly exercises not but with His full knowledge and will.

Take the matter more briefly and condensedly thus: God wills that adultery should not be committed, in as far as it is a pollution and violation of the holy bond of matrimony, and a great transgression of His righteous law. But, in as far as God uses adulteries, as well as other wicked doings of men, to execute His own acts of vengeance on the sins of men, He certainly executes the office and performs the sacred duty of a Judge, not unwillingly, but willingly ! Wherefore, in what instances soever either the Chaldeans or Assyrians acted cruelly in their terrible victories and horrible slaughters, for such awful barbarities we by no means praise them. Nay, farther, God Himself declares that He will be the avenger of the afflicted and inhumanly treated; and yet, the same righteous God elsewhere declares that these slaughters are sacrifices which He has in this way prepared for Himself ! (Isa. xxix.; xxxiv. 6; Jer. xlvi. 10; Ezek. xxxix.) And will you deny that God wills that which He thus dignifies with the honoured designation of " a sacrifice "? Awake, then, from thy slumber, open thine eyes from thy blindness, and at length acknowledge that God, by secret and inexplicable ways, rules and overrules His righteous judgments.

You, however, by a subtlety of argument, which you deem marvellously wise, inquire whether God, from the time that He first forbade men to commit adultery, willed that all should be adulterers, or only a part of them. Take this as a sure and certain reply: God demands of all men chastity, because God loveth chastity in all men. Experience itself, however, manifests

(without our entering into any proof or mention of the important facts themselves) there are in God different reasons, motives and manners, of His willing. For if He equally and effectually willed that all men should be chaste, He would, without all doubt, make and render all men chaste. Wherefore, since chastity is a singular gift of God, the prompt and evident conclusion is, that He wills that which He commands in His Word differently from that which He effectually works and fulfils by His regenerating Spirit. Hence your impure and profane tongue has no ground whatever for charging God with inconsistency. God is neither dubious nor ambiguous in anything which He commands or forbids, but He plainly discovers His pure and holy nature in both. Neither will you find anything contrary to this, His purity, holiness and righteousness, in that secret and hidden will of His, by which He rules and overrules all the actions of the sons of men.

Whoredom is highly displeasing to God as the author of all chastity. Yet the same holy God's will was to punish the adultery of David by the incestuous lust of Absalom. God forbids man's blood to be shed. For as He greatly loves His own image, so He defends it by His own protection. And yet He raised up out of the wicked nations slaughterers of the sons of Eli, because it was His will that they should be killed; for so the Sacred History plainly and literally teaches us. If your blindness is as a stone-wall in your way, yet all who really have eyes see a perfectly holy and harmonious consistency in God, when He, the same Divine Being who hates whoredom and slaughter in as far as they are sins, or (which is the same thing) who hates the sins of whoredom and of murder because they are transgressions of His righteous law, yet exercises His secret and righteous judgments in justly punishing the wickednesses of nations and of men by means of the cruelties and sins of other nations and other men. And as to your own conceit of your acute wisdom when you

ask the question, " If there be any secret will of God, when and how will that will be revealed to me? " the answer to your impious question will contain no difficulty when you have granted to me the acknowledgment that we are to follow the Holy Spirit alone as our teacher. For if God, according to the testimony of Paul, " dwelleth in the light that no man can approach unto," and if the same apostle reverentially declares that " His ways are past finding out," why am I not freely permitted to wonder at, and adore, that secret will of His which is hidden from my comprehension? The wisdom of God is exalted in the Book of Job with the highest praises, that mortals may know and confess that it cannot be spanned by any human intellect. Are you, then, purposed to laugh at everything which is said concerning a matter so sublimely secret? Will you upbraid David with folly for solemnly proclaiming and adoring those judgments of God which he confessed to be a " great deep "? I hear from all the prophets, and from all the apostles, that the counsels of God are incomprehensible. What they all declare I embrace with a firm and unhesitating faith, and what I believe I freely and undoubtingly profess and teach. Why, then, is this my reverence for God's secret will charged upon me as a fault and a crime?

And that you may not turn round upon me, and say that I adduce from the Scriptures examples and proofs wholly irrelevant, Paul's case and mine are surely one and the same, who, when speaking of the secret election or reprobation of God and adoring the riches and profundity of His wisdom, the incomprehensibility of His judgments and the unsearchableness of His ways, yet ceases not openly to affirm that God hath mercy on whom He will, and consigns whom He will to eternal destruction. In a word, exult, I pray you, no more in the irreconcilable inconsistency which you imagine you have discovered in my doctrines. For the Scriptures furnish an abundance of testimonies concerning the secret and hidden will of God. What I have from them

learned, I fearlessly assert and speak of as a thing sure and certain. But as my human intellect cannot soar to a height so stupendous, I adore with reverence, fear and trembling, that mystery which is too high and too deep for the angels themselves to penetrate. And this is my reason for offering so frequently in my writings the admonitory warning, that nothing is better or safer in these solemn matters than wise ignorance ! because the folly of those who suffer themselves to be, or who wish to be, wise above what is written or permitted of God, is worse than the frenzy of madmen.

By this time you must see how sure and certain I hold that will of God to be, concerning which the Scriptures so clearly and fully testify, which same will is, nevertheless, so secret and incomprehensible with reference to the reasons why God wills this or that, or how He wills this or that, that the angelic intellects cannot grasp the comprehension. The fact is, that the pride and presumption of yourself, and of all like you, so madden ye all, that whatever ye cannot comprehend, but are compelled to relinquish as beyond your capacity, ye labour with all your might to make out to be nothing at all ! As to your continuing to cast in my teeth inconsistencies, contrarieties and contradictions, I have settled all those a hundred times over. And as to your scurrility, by which you attempt to overwhelm me, all that being insipid and pointless penetrates me not. And as to your charge against me, that I am an imitator of God, you, on account of your presumptuous and devil-like imitation of His wisdom, will one day find, to your eternal cost, what it is to exalt your own wisdom and to make yourself therein equal unto the Most High. The only pain and agony I feel are caused by your frenzied blasphemies, by which you profane the sacred Majesty of God, of which profanation He will Himself be, in His appointed time, the sure and certain Avenger.

As the will of God, which He has revealed in His

Law, is good, whatsoever is contrary to that Law and that will I acknowledge to be evil. But when you brawl that that secret and hidden will of God, by which He separates the " vessels of mercy " from the " vessels of wrath," according to "His good pleasure," and by which He makes use of both "vessels," as He will, is contrary to His Law; when you utter this, you breathe forth from the foul sink of your ignorance a detestable fiction of your own brain and a horrible lie.

I freely acknowledge that Christ is speaking of the revealed will of God, when He says, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, . . . and ye would not." For He is upbraiding the Jews with the same ingratitude and hardness of heart as He had before done in the song of Moses (Exod. xv. 17, etc.). And we know full well that God did in reality bestow on the Jewish nation all the blessings which the words of that song expresses, seeing that, by giving them His law, by the ordinances of His worship, and by the many benefits which He conferred on that people, and by which He bound them to Himself, He protected them, as it were, by the overshadowing of His wings; and He would still have done so, had not their indomitable obstinacy and obduracy carried them away from Him. After, therefore, Christ had testified His will so often and in so many different ways, spoken in order to win a perverse nation to their obedience, but all in vain; it is with the utmost justice that He complains of their ingratitude. For, as to your restricting all these things to the lifetime of Christ, this you do with your usual ignorance of these divine things. Just as if Christ were not the true God, who, from the beginning, had not ceased to spread the wings of grace over His own elect people ! But here you, in a moment, conclude that, if there were another and secret will in Christ, while He thus addressed Jerusalem, the whole life of Christ must have been an inconsistency. Just as if, to allure

by the voice and by kindnesses, and yet to leave the heart untouched by the inspiration of His secret Spirit, were in Christ diverse and contrary acts !

But, that the absurdity and futility of your calumny may the more plainly appear, answer me, I pray you, this question: Where does Christ complain that He was mistaken or deceived by the event, that the vine, from which He had expected grapes, brought forth wild grapes? What answer have you to give, noble teacher and skilful rhetorician? Will you impute ignorance to Christ, to avoid making Him speak falsely? What I did the Jews entirely prevent and defeat the purposes of God? Why, according to you, the blessed God was sitting in doubt all the time as to what the event would be, and that event quite deceived and surprised Him at last. No ! nor will it at all alter the state of the case if you make the saying of Christ, which He speaks to the fact and to the state of Jerusalem, refer to the secret foreknowledge of God. God had elsewhere said, " Surely they will fear My Name" (Zeph. iii. 7), but they hastened to corrupt themselves more and more. God had expected some profit from His great punishments inflicted, but He afterwards complains that He was disappointed. Can you, then, disentangle yourself from this divine set of truth in no other way than by reducing God to order, and making Him depend for the accomplishment of His eternal purposes upon the free will of men? Surely it is plain and evident to the meanest capacity, that God, in order to set forth the greatness of the wickedness of His people, speaks as in the person and after the manner of men, when they complain that all their labour is lost, because they are quite disappointed in their expected success.

It is most certain that those whom God wills to gather unto Himself effectually He " draws " by His Spirit, and that that which it is in His hand and purpose to do, He will, according to His promises, perform. Wherefore, when many who are called follow Him not,

it is openly manifest that that manner of gathering together, of which Christ complains as having been unfruitful and inefficacious, was not attended with that efficacious influence of His Spirit, of which He elsewhere makes frequent mention, as, for instance, by the prophet Isaiah: " He shall gather together the dispersed of Judah " (Isa. xi. 12). Again, " The glory of the Lord shall gather thee " (Isa. lviii. 8). Again, " I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west " (Isa. xliii. 5). Again, " Your God will be your rearward" (or will gather you) (Isa. lii. 12). For the prophet had just before said, " The Lord hath made bare His holy arm," that His power might be displayed " before the eyes of all the nations " (Isa. lii. 10). Hence it is that the prophet a little afterwards repeats, " For a small moment have I forsaken thee, but with great mercies will I gather thee" ( Isa. liv. 7). But what I have before advanced concerning the precepts of God, is sufficient and abundant, I hope, to stop the mouth of all your blasphemies. Although, therefore, God commands nothing feignedly, or ambiguously, or fictitiously, but plainly and solemnly declares what He wills and approves; yet His mind and will are that a different kind of obedience should be rendered to Him by His elect (whom He effectually bends and turns to His obedience), from that which is offered to Him by the reprobate, whom, indeed, He also calls to Himself by the outward voice of His Word, but whom He condescends not effectually " to draw " by His Spirit.

The natural obstinacy and depravity of all men are alike; so that no man will take upon himself the yoke of obedience to God voluntarily and willingly. To some God promises the Spirit of obedience; others He leaves in their depravity. For notwithstanding all your vain talk about it, the truth is that " a heart of flesh " and " a new heart " are not promised to all men promiscuously, but to the elect peculiarly, that they might walk in the commandments of God. What

have you to reply to these things noble teacher and judge of the truth? And what if God invites the whole mass of mankind to come unto Him, and yet knowingly, and of His own will, denies His Spirit to the greater part, " drawing" a few only into obedience to Himself by His Spirit's secret inspiration and operation -- Is the adorable God to be charged, on that account, with inconsistency?

ARTICLE VIII.
(THAT IS, CALUMNY VIII.)
THE HARDENING OF PHARAOH, AND SO HIS OBSTINACY OF MIND AND REBELLION, WAS THE WORK OF GOD, EVEN ON THE TESTIMONY OF MOSES HIMSELF, WHO ASCRIBES ALL THE REBELLION OF PHARAOH TO GOD.

ARTICLE IX.
(THAT IS, CALUMNY IX. )
THE WILL OF GOD IS THE SUPREME CAUSE OF ALL THE HARDNESS OF HEART IN MEN.

CALUMNIATOR'S STATEMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS.

had refused to obey Him. Another like question they ask concerning the words, " To-day if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts." Now, if you should interpret this passage by rendering it, " God would not have you harden your hearts," such explanation would involve the greatest absurdity, for it would be making God command men to do that which is the prerogative of Himself alone. For if the hardening of hearts is the work of God, it is absurd to command men to harden their own hearts or not to harden their own hearts; for they could no more do it than they could add one cubit to their stature, or take one cubit from it.

REPLY OF JOHN CALVIN TO ARTICLES VIII. AND IX., &c., &c.

Of Pharaoh"? Now I need no farther reply to this your question than that which you furnish in the words of this lying article yourself, which you, pretending to quote from my writings, or corrupting, or not comprehending them, make to say that, as the will of God is the supreme or remote cause of the induration, man himself, who hardens his own heart, is, and must be, the proximate cause of the hardening. Now, I have everywhere most distinctly shown the difference between the supreme or remote cause, and all mediate and proximate causes. For while a sinner can find the root of every evil affection in himself, what ground can there be for charging God with any fault of such sinner's transgressions? Such an accuser of God acts, as I have elsewhere said, just like the nurse of Medea, as represented by the ancient poet, who preposterously exclaims, " O that the planks that formed the ship Argo had never been cut down by the axe on Mount Pelion ! " For, all the while the impure princess, her mistress, was burning with her own depraved lust, and felt herself driven headlong by its force to betray and ruin her father's kingdom, this foolish nurse blames neither her mistress's corrupt passion, nor the deep enticements of Jason, nor sees those immediate causes at all; but goes on complaining of the ship that brought Jason to Colchis, and laments that such a ship was ever built in Greece. Exactly in the same manner does the man who, being conscious of his own sin and fault, fetches a remote cause of his iniquity from afar, even from God Himself, utterly and ridiculously forget what he himself is.

Surely, then, you must now see that although God does, in His own secret and sovereign way, harden men's hearts, yet that no fault can possibly be imputed to Him, because every man hardens his own heart by the essential evil and wickedness of his own nature.

But when God turns the hearts of men to the obedience and worship of Himself, that is another

form of His working altogether. For as we are all, by nature, bent on obstinacy and resistance, no man will desire to do good unless he be acted upon of God and led so to do. And though the Scripture saith that " the preparations of the heart in man are from the Lord," and that the faithful prepare their hearts to seek God, and to render Him a voluntary worship, the Scripture by no means contradicts itself herein, but it distinctly shows that all the true worshippers of God render Him their service willingly and from an affection and holy freedom of soul. And yet, again, this by no means stands in contradiction, or in the way, of the fact that God all the while performs His part by the operations and influences of His secret Spirit.

But with reference to His hardening men's hearts, that is a different way of God's working, as I have just observed. Because God does not govern the reprobate by His regenerating Spirit; but He gives them over to the devil, and leaves them to be his slaves; and He so overrules their depraved wills by His secret judgment and counsel, that they can do nothing but that which He has decreed. Hence, such is the Divine harmony and marvellous consistency of these things, that though God hardens whomsoever He will, yet everyone so hardened is the cause and author of his own induration. But that I may not extend my observations to too great a length in replying to this article, let me be permitted to impress on the minds and memories of godly and upright readers the following admonition of Augustine: " When the apostle says that God ' gave ' certain characters ' over to vile affections,' it is preposterous ignorance to refer this to the longsuffering of God. For the same apostle elsewhere connects the longsuffering of God with His power, as where he says, ' What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath, fitted to destruction? ' (Rom. ix. 22)," etc. Indeed, even if this

learned and pious father and teacher had never written or spoken on this great matter, the authority of God alone ought to be enough, and more than sufficient, for our understanding and faith. It is not I that said that " God taketh away the hearts of princes, and causeth them to err," or " that God held the heart of Pharaoh, that he might not incline to humanity and mercy." It is not I that said " that God turned the hearts of the nations, and hardened them to hate His people;" or, " that He hissed for the Egyptians, and used them as His servants." It was not I that said " that Sennacherib was God's rod in His hand, to punish His people." I did not say all these things. They are all the declarations of the Spirit of God Himself .

What ! when the Scripture itself affirms that Saul was carried away by an evil spirit from God, will you ascribe this to the sole patience or mere permission of God? How much nearer the truth is Augustine in his admonitory instruction, when he observes: " The sins which Satan and the wicked commit are their own; but that which is accomplished by their sins is effected by the power of God, who divides the darkness from the light as He will. " Now you charge me with saying that which God Himself asserts all the while in His own words. In this matter, let the same Augustine reply to you in my stead, where he says: " If the Scripture be carefully examined, it shows that God not only directs those good wills of men (which wills He has made good out of evil wills) unto good actions and unto eternal life, but that those wills also which remain in their natural corruption are so under the power of God, that He turns and inclines them when soever and whithersoever He will, either to confer blessings, or to inflict punishments; and that He does this by judgments the most secret, but at the same time most just."

ARTICLE X.
(THAT IS, CALUMNY X.)
SATAN IS A LIAR, AT THE COMMAND OF GOD.