t this defense? If all are taken from a corrupt
mass, it is not strange that all are subject to condemnation. Let them
not therefore charge God with injustice, if by his eternal judgment
they are doomed to a death to which they themselves feel that, whether
they will or not, they are drawn spontaneously by their own nature.
Hence it appears how perverse is this affectation of murmuring, when
of set purpose they suppress the cause of condemnation which they are
compelled to recognize in themselves, that they may lay the blame upon
God. But though I should confess a hundred times that God is the
author (and it is most certain that he is), they do not however
thereby efface their own guilt, which, engraven on their own
consciences, is ever and anon presenting itself to their view....

If God merely foresaw human events, and did not also arrange and
dispose of them at his pleasure, there might be room for agitating the
question, how far his foreknowledge amounts to necessity; but since he
foresees the things which are to happen, simply because he has decreed
that they are so to happen, it is vain to debate about prescience,
while it is clear that all events take place by his sovereign
appointment.

They deny that it is ever said in distinct terms, God decreed that
Adam should perish by his revolt. As if the same God who is declared
in Scripture to do whatsoever he pleases could have made the noblest
of his creatures without any special purpose. They say that, in
accordance with free will, he was to be the architect of his own
fortune; that God had decreed nothing but to treat him according to
his desert. If this frigid fiction is received, where will be the
omnipotence of God, by which, according to his secret counsel on which
everything depends, he rules over all? But whether they will allow it
or not, predestination is manifest in Adam's posterity. It was not
owing to nature that they all lost salvation by the fault of one
parent. Why should they refuse to admit with regard to one man that
which against their will they admit with regard to the whole human
race? Why should they in caviling lose their labor? Scripture
proclaims that all were, in the person of one, made liable to eternal
death. As this cannot be ascribed to nature, it is plain that it is
owing to the wonderful counsel of God. It is very absurd in these
worthy defenders of the justice of God to strain at a gnat and swallow
a camel. I again ask how it is tha