John Calvin and Henry Cole

John Calvin reply:

If you steal of necessity (according to your own argument), think you not that you are less excusable after the Law has been given than you were before it was given? How widely different is the apostle Paul’s opinion of himself, where he confesses that he was “sold under sin,” but where, at the same time, he freely and loudly testifies that the Law “worketh wrath”? showing thereby that it is in vain to stretch forth in our defence the shield of necessity, when every man’s own conscience condemns him of voluntary and wilful wickedness.

Now I would just ask you this question: When, a year ago, you had your own hook in your hand, by which you might have pulled down firewood to warm your own house, was it not your own will that drove you to steal wood from your neighbour? If, then, this one act suffices for your own righteous condemnation, that you willingly made a base and wicked gain to your neighbour’s loss, what noise soever you may make about necessity, necessity did not acquit you on that occasion. And as to your farther noisy argument: that no one can be justly condemned, excepting on account of his crime and after his crime; concerning the former there exists no strife nor cause of strife (or ought not to exist) between me and you, because I everywhere teach that no one perishes but by the just judgment of God. But I cannot withhold my testimony that there lies concealed under your words a great depth of poison. For if your statement of the Divine matter and your figure of speech are to be received, God will appeal unjust who righteously includes the whole race of Abraham under the guilt of original sin.

You deny that it is lawful and right in God to condemn any one of mortals, unless it be on account of sin committed. Now numberless mortals are taken out of life while yet perfect infants. You had better then commence your virulent war with God Himself, Who casts innocent babes, just taken from the wombs of their mothers, under the guilt of original sin, and subjects them to His wrath and the desert of eternal death. Who, I pray you, must not detest the blasphemy of thus contending against God, when it is exposed to view, either by the voice or by pen of truth? Curse me as long as you will, but blaspheme not the adorable God. For, as to myself, I can never expect to be free or exempt from the reproaches of those who spare not the ever blessed God Himself.

With respect to the second member of your argument, that no one can justly be condemned until after his crime, just weigh in your own balance the lightness and emptiness of your loquacity herein. Why, your own masters, Pighius, Servetus, and all like barking unclean dogs, will at least confess that all those whom God foreknew to be worthy of eternal destruction were condemned by Him before the foundation of the world; whereas you will not grant unto God the right to condemn any to eternal death, but those who have first been brought before earthly judges for their actually perpetrated crimes. From such arguments as these, readers may at once gather the marvellous extent of your insanity, who hesitate not to root out, in absolute sport or jest, all the solemn order of the Divine justice!


John Calvin and Henry Cole, Calvin’s Calvinism: A Defence of the Secret Providence of God (Wertheim and Macintosh, 1857), 114–115.

The lecturers in Bible College are all sinners!