§. II.
[57] Calvin in cap. 3. Gen. Id. 1. Inst. c. 18, S. 1. Id. lib. de Præd. Idem lib. de Provid. Id. Inst. c. 23. S. 1.
[58] Beza lib. de Præd.
[59] Id. de Præd. ad Art. 1.
[60] Zanch. de Excæcat. q. 5. Id. lib. 5. de Nat. Dei cap. 2. de Præd.
[61] Paræus lib. 3. de Amis. gratiæ c. 2. ibid. c. 1.
[62] Martyr in Rom.
[63] Zuing. lib. de Prov. c. 5.
[64] Resp. ad Vorst. part. 1. p. 120.
If these Sayings do not plainly and evidently import, that God is the Author of Sin, we must not then seek these Men’s Opinions from their Words, but some Way else. It seems as if they had assumed to themselves that monstrous and twofold Will they feigned of God; one by which they declare their Minds openly, and another more secret and hidden, which is quite contrary to the other. Nor doth it at all help them to say, That Man sins willingly, since that Willingness, Proclivity, and Propensity to Evil is, according to their Judgment, so necessarily imposed upon him, that he cannot but be willing, because God hath willed and decreed him to be so. Which shift is just as if I should take a Child uncapable to resist me, and throw it down from a great Precipice; the Weight of the Child’s Body indeed makes it go readily down, and the Violence of the Fall upon some Rock or Stone beats out its Brains and kills it. Now then, I pray, though the Body of the Child goes willingly down (for I suppose it as to its Mind uncapable of any Will) and the Weight of its Body, and not any immediate Stroke of my Hand, who perhaps am at a great Distance, makes it die, whether is the Child or I the proper Cause of its Death? Let any Man of Reason judge, if God’s Part be, with them, as great, yea, more immediate, in the Sins of Men, as by the Testimonies above brought doth appear, whether doth not this make him not only the Author of Sin, but more unjust than the unjustest of Men?