n might lead his readers to think of God as the author of evil.
This is a consequence which the logical mind of Melanchthon did not fail
to draw from his own scheme of necessity. In his commentary on the Epistle
to the Romans, in the edition of 1525, he asserted "that God wrought all
things, evil as well as good; that he was the author of David's adultery,
and the treason of Judas, as well as of Paul's conversion."

This doctrine was maintained by Melanchthon on practical as well as on
speculative grounds. It is useful, says he, in its tendency to subdue
human arrogance; it represses the wisdom and cunning of human reason. We
have generally observed, that whenever a learned divine denounces the
arrogancy of reason, and insists on an humble submission to his own
doctrines, that he has some absurdity which he wishes us to embrace; he
feels a sort of internal consciousness that human reason is arrayed
against him, and hence he abuses and vilifies it. But reason is not to be
kept in due subordination by any such means. If sovereigns would maintain
a legitimate authority over their subjects, they should bind them with
wise and wholesome laws, and not with arbitrary and despotic enactments,
which are so well calculated to engender hatred and rebellion. In like
manner, the best possible way to tame the refractory reason of man, and
hold it in subjection, is to bind it with the silken cords of divine
truth, and not fetter it with the harsh and galling absurdities of man's
invention. Melanchthon himself furnished a striking illustration of the
justness of this remark; for although, like other reformers, he taught the
doctrine of a divine fatality of all events, in order to humble the pride
of the human intellect, his own reason afterward rebelled against it. He
not only recanted the monstrous doctrine which made God the author of sin,
but he openly combatted it.

In the writings of Beza and Zwingle there are passages, in relation to the
origin of evil, more offensive, if possible, than any we have adduced from
Calvin and Melanchthon. The mode in which the reformers defended their
common doctrine was, with some few exceptions, the same in substance. They
have said nothing which can serve to dispel, or even materially lessen,
the stupendous cloud of difficulties which their scheme spreads over the
moral government of God.

Considering the condition of the Church, the state of human knowledge,
and, in short, all the circumstances