t the fall of Adam involves so many
nations with their infant children in eternal death without remedy,
unless that it so seemed meet to God? Here the most loquacious tongues
must be dumb. The decree, I admit, is dreadful; and yet it is
impossible to deny that God foreknew what the end of man was to be
before he made him, and foreknew because he had so ordained by his
decree. Should any one here inveigh against the prescience of God, he
does it rashly and unadvisedly. For why, pray, should it be made a
charge against the heavenly Judge, that he was not ignorant of what
was to happen? Thus, if there is any just or plausible complaint, it
must be directed against predestination. Nor ought it to seem absurd
when I say that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in
him the ruin of his posterity, but also at his own pleasure arranged
it. For as it belongs to his wisdom to foreknow all future events, so
it belongs to his power to rule and govern them by his hand.

FREEDOM OF THE WILL

From the 'Institutes of the Christian Religion'

God has provided the soul of man with intellect, by which he might
discern good from evil, just from unjust, and might know what to
follow or to shun, reason going before with her lamp; whence
philosophers, in reference to her directing power, have called her
[Greek: to hegemonichon]. To this he has joined will, to which
choice belongs. Man excelled in these noble endowments in his
primitive condition, when reason, intelligence, prudence, and judgment
not only sufficed for the government of his earthly life, but also
enabled him to rise up to God and eternal happiness. Thereafter choice
was added to direct the appetites and temper all the organic motions;
the will being thus perfectly submissive to the authority of reason.
In this upright state, man possessed freedom of will, by which if he
chose he was able to obtain eternal life. It were here unseasonable to
introduce the question concerning the secret predestination of God,
because we are not considering what might or might not happen, but
what the nature of man truly was. Adam, therefore, might have stood if
he chose, since it was only by his own will that he fell; but it was
because his will was pliable in either direction, and he had not
received constancy to persevere, that he so easily fell. Still he had
a free choice of good and evil; and not only so, but in the mind and
will there was the highest rectitude, and all