01.02. Section I.

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." This is the FIRST ARTICLE I shall produce. And now hear what arguments are brought by your adversaries against it.

CALUMNIATOR’S STATEMENTS AND OBSERVATIONS. Your opponents maintain that this article is contrary to nature, and contrary to the Scripture. With respect to nature, they affirm that every animal loves its own offspring. Now this nature is given of God, whence it follows that God also loves His own offspring; for God would not cause all animals to love their own offspring, unless He Himself loved His own offspring. And this position they prove in the following manner from Isaiah 66:9 : "Shall I bring to the birth, and not cause to bring forth?" As if He had said, "That which I cause others to do, I also do myself. Now I cause others to bring forth; therefore I also bring forth." By a parity of reasoning, therefore, they derive this argument and its conclusion: God causes all animals to love their own offspring. Therefore He Himself also loves His own offspring. Now all men are the offspring of God. For God is the Father of Adam, from whom all men sprung. But to create men to perdition is not an act of love, but of hatred. Therefore, God did not create anyone to perdition. And, again, they argue: "Creation is a work of love, not of hatred. 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?" (Matthew 7:11) 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 Timothy 2:4). 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 shewn "unto the third and fourth generation." Whereas, "it is evident, on the contrary, that His mercy extends "even unto the thousandth generation!"

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REPLY OF JOHN CALVIN TO

ARTICLE I (THAT IS, CALUMNY I.) AND TO THE CALUMNIATOR’S OBSERVATIONS

THEREON. That on which you seize as your FIRST ARTICLE is, "that God, by His pure and mere will, created the greatest part of the world to perdition." Now, all this?"the greatest part of the world unto perdition" and "by His own pure and mere will"?is a perfect fiction, and a production from the workshop of your own brain. For although God did certainly decree from the beginning everything which should befall the race of man, yet such a manner of speech as the saying that the end or object of God’s work of creation was destruction or perdition, is nowhere to be found in my writings. Just like an unclean hog, therefore, you root up with your foul snout all doctrine that is of sweet odour, hoping to find in it something filthy and offensive. 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 right fully 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 12:32) 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 (Isaiah 54:1; Isaiah 49:19-21, 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 I 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" (Matthew 7:11)?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" (Genesis 1:31). 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" (Genesis 1:31). 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" (Proverbs 16:4).

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 (Ezekiel 33:11). But listen, I pray you, to that which, in the prophet, immediately follows, "Because God inviteth all men to repentance" (Ezekiel 18:30-32). 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 (Ezekiel 18:30) 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 and alike men to Himself, equally, 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 Timothy 2:4), 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 Peter 3:9). 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" (Zechariah 1:3). 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 Timothy 2:26). 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 describe those who do return: "Turn Thou me, and I shall be turned; for Thou art the Lord my God. Surely after that I was turned, I repented" (Jeremiah 31:19). 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 generation 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 (Matthew 23:32).