Welcome to tape number four of a Defense of the Secret Providence of God by John Calvin as read by Michael Wyatt. This Reformation audio resource is a production of Stillwaters Revival Books. There is no copyright on this material. We encourage you to reproduce it and pass it on to your friends. Many free resources as well as our complete mail-order catalog containing classic and contemporary Puritan and Reformed books see you there. Avenue, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, T6L3T5. If you do not have a web connection, please request a free printed catalog. If you do have a web connection and would like to be added to our email list, please send an email to addd.swrb.com with the word add in the subject line. And now to the reading of A Defense of the Secret Providence of God by John Calvin, which we pray you find to be a great blessing in which we hope draws you nearer to the Lord Jesus Christ. But Ezekiel sets this forth still more clearly and remarkably. And if the prophet be deceived when he has spoken a thing, I the Lord have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel. You would have us to rest content with the permission of God only, but God, by His prophet, asserts that His will and His hand are in the whole matter as the moving cause. Now just consider, then, which of the two is the more worthy to be believed? God, who by His Spirit, the only fountain of truth, thus speaks concerning Himself, Or you, prating about his hidden and unsearchable mysteries out of the worthless knowledge of your own carnal brain? What? When God calls in Satan for his purposes as the instrument of his vengeance and openly gives him commandment to go and deceive the prophets of Ahab, does this positive command differ nothing from a mere permission? The voice of God contains in it no ambiguity whatever. Who, saith God, will go and deceive Ahab for me? Nor does God command Satan in any obscure manner. Go thou and be a lying spirit in the mouths of all his prophets." 1 Kings 22 Now I wish to know from you whether the doing a thing is the same as the permitting it to be done. When David had secretly abused the wife of another man, God declares that He will cause all David's wives to be dragged forth to make an example of the same disgraceful sin openly in the sight of the Son. God does not say, I will permit it to be done, but I will do it. But you, in your wondrous defense of God as you think, would aid him by your fallacious help in thrusting forward your imaginary permission. How very differently does David think and act. He, while revolving in his mind the fearful judgment of God, exclaims, I was dumb because thou did it. In like manner, Job blesses God and confesses that he was plundered by the robbers, not only through the permission, but by the will and act of God, for he plainly affirms that it was the Lord who gave and it was the Lord who took away what he had himself given. If, upon your authority, giving and receiving are to be understood in the same way as willing and permitting, riches so considered are not blessings actually bestowed of God, but they fall into our hands at random by the permission of God. But if you and your foul band should continue thus to cry out against God until doomsday, he will nevertheless in due time fully justify and vindicate himself. But as for us, we will adore with all reverence those mysteries which so far surpass our comprehension, until the brightness of their full knowledge shall shine forth upon us in that day when he, who is now seen through a glass darkly, shall be seen by us face to face. Then, saith Augustine, shall he be seen in the brightest light of understanding, that which the godly now hold fast in faith. How sure, certain, immutable, and all-efficacious is the will of God! How many things he can do which he yet wills not to be done, but that he wills nothing which he cannot do! With reference, however, to the present article, I will answer you from the mouth of the same godly writer. These, saith Augustine, are the mighty works of the Lord, exquisitely perfect according to every bent of his will, and so perfect in exquisite wisdom that when both the angelic and the human natures had sinned, that is, had done, not what God willed but what each nature willed, even by a like will in each creature, it came to pass that what God as the Creator willed not he himself accomplished according as he had willed, thus blessedly using as the God of perfect goodness even evils to the damnation of those whom he had righteously predestinated unto punishment, and to the salvation of those whom he had mercifully predestinated unto grace. For, as far as these transgressing natures were themselves concerned, They did that which God willed not, but, with respect to the omnipotence of God, they could by no means have done what they did without it, nor without its concernment therein. For, by the very act of their doing, that which was contrary to the will of God, they were themselves thereby fulfilling the will of God. Wherefore, these mighty works of God, exquisitely perfect, according to every bent of His will, are such that in the wonderful and ineffable way that is not done without the will of God, which is even done contrary to His will, because it could not be done at all unless He permitted it to be done. And yet He does not permit unwillingly, but willingly. Nor, as the God of goodness, would He permit a thing to be done evilly unless, as the God of omnipotence, He could work good even out of the evil done. " As to the testimonies of the Scripture which you adduce, they have no more to do with the present mighty question and cause than oil has to do with wine to make a mixture or to dilute the one with the other. God, speaking to the Jews by the prophet Ezekiel and addressing them as obedient, says, Go ye, worship every man his own idols. This, I openly profess, is not the voice of God commanding or exhorting, but of God rejecting an impious mixture of worship, a worship by which the Jews had profaned his sanctuary. Now what else can you conclude from this passage but that God sometimes permits that which to be done, that to be which he disapproves and condemns? As if it were not evident to all that God sometimes commands and sometimes permits by the same forms of expression. God says in the Law, Six days shalt thou labour. Here is a permission. For sanctifying every seventh day to himself, he leaves the other six free to men. In a manner somewhat different also he permitted of old divorce to the Jews, which he nevertheless by no means approved. In the present case recorded by the prophet Ezekiel, he gives up the double-minded he gives up the double-minded and the perfidious to idols, because he will not suffer his name to be polluted. But how is it that you have forgotten here that all this is wrought by the secret providence of God, by which he ordains and turns to the accomplishment of his own purposes all the movements and tumults of the world, according to his own will? Moreover, corrupting vainly and ignorantly as you do that other passage, Ezekiel 20, verses 24 and 25, you evince how everything sacred is disregarded by an impure and profane person like yourself. The words of God are, Because they despised my statutes, I gave them precepts that were not good. Here you trifle by observing that when they were forsaken by God they fell into idolatry, But God undoubtedly means that the Jews were given over to the Chaldeans into slavery and that the Chaldeans, who were idolaters, were oppressing them by their tyrannical laws. But our question now is whether God merely permitted the Jews to be thus dragged into exile by the Chaldeans, or whether he used the latter as rods chosen by himself wherewith to scourge the Jews for their sins. But if you will still make the doctrine of mere permission a pretext, you might as well commit all the prophets to the flames at once, who at one time declare that Satan was sent by God to deceive, and another that the Chaldeans or Assyrians were sent by God to destroy, and who at the same time assert that God hissed for the Egyptians that He might use their might in punishing His people, and another that the Assyrians were his hired soldiers, that Nebuchadnezzar was his servant in plundering Egypt, and that the Assyrians were the axe in his hand and the rods of his anger in utterly devastating Judea. I do not multiply, as I might do, kindred examples, lest I should exceed all moderate bounds of proof." Nor is your inebriated audacity the less manifest, where you would vainly make it appear that God's sending strong delusions on the unbelieving, that they might believe a lie, means that he permits false teachers to exist, and that, as he permitted the prodigal son to fall into riotous living when he had deserted his father, so he permits his prodigals to fall into error and delusion when they forsake him. And when you spout forth all this folly, you imagine that your readers are so blind that they do not see things to be quite otherwise in the words of Paul, where he says, God shall send upon them strong delusions that they might believe a lie, 2 Thessalonians 2.11. But it is no marvel whatever that he should pray thus, at will and at random, who imagines that there are no judgments of God at all, or does not know what the judgment means or holds it in perfect contempt if he does. For no man who is not insane would say that a judge had no hand in the judgment of the wicked, or that he would sit down in unconcern and leave others to perform that duty which belonged properly to himself alone. You attempt, however, by your barking either to frighten me or to provoke me when you say that by the permission of God spirits of error and delusion exist who teach that God will sin. But as this same reproach was cast in the teeth of the Apostle Paul himself, why should I grieve or complain at being a partaker of the same reproach with him? You adduce a passage from the prophet Zechariah where the nations are described as punishing God's people beyond the extent which his wrath required. Are you then really such a simpleton as not to believe that there was protection enough in God to prevent the success of his people's affliction by their enemies, and to have made their punishment less had he been pleased or had he willed so to do? You reply that the words of the prophet intimate the success of punishment, but you must be twice or thrice dipped in stupidity if you perceive not that God tries the patience of his people in a marvelous manner by the severest proofs, sometimes in one way and sometimes in another, and that he is often at the same time offended by the insolence of their enemies where he sees them become too much elated with their victories and when they insult and cruelly use the conquered. Nay, your foolish comments and reasoning fall to the ground of their own accord, directly militating against and mutually destroying each other. For the truth and fact must be either that God positively commanded those profane nations, or He merely permitted them to gently chastise His people. If you reply that He commanded them to do so, I then attain the conclusion that, though these neighboring enemies were, without cause, afflictive to the miserable exiles who dwelt with them, yet that they would have been without blame if they had not exceeded due bounds in their cruel treatment of them as the conquered and the captives. For who will attribute that to them as iniquity what they had done at God's command? But you are laboring all the time to establish a difference between the permission of God and His command, thus making it appear that though God commands their enemies to inflict punishment on His people, yet it was by His permission only that they exceeded all due bounds in the punishment they inflicted. In this same way of reasoning, the Israelites also were deserving of censure. But they also afflicted their brethren of Judah more severely than the wrath of God against them, according to your reasoning, required. But your insanity blinds you so far as to cause you to assert that they would have been free from all guilt and blame if they had been moderate in their vexation of their brethren. For I have to bring you back again and again to this point, that the Israelites' sin not only because, by the permission of God as thou imaginest, they exercised too great severity towards their brethren, but because they took up arms against them at all. You, however, hesitate not to declare that there was no sin in their commencing war against their brethren, because God was angry with the people of Judah, and himself armed the Israelites that they might execute his vengeance upon them at his own command. Whereas I maintain that the Israelites sin in a twofold sense. First, because they had themselves no intent or desire to do the will of God, although they were really the instruments of his vengeance. And secondly, because their atrocity itself proves that they were destitute of all sense of equity. At the very outset you betray your shameless ignorance in your pretending that men, as far as they are themselves concerned, err and fall by the permission of God, whereas such a representation of the sacred matter is impious and profane. It is making God to give permission to men to do evil in reference to their own actions as considered in themselves, while the reality and truth are that God severely prohibits and solemnly forbids the doing of anything that is contrary to His command. But why God, of His will, permits men to do a wrong, nay, why God by His secret decree gives men over to evil, whom He nevertheless commands to continue in the right way, it becomes our sobriety and modesty of mind to remain willingly ignorant. To search into this profound secret, insolently as you do, is rashness, audacity, and madness. How cleverly and appropriately you interpret that passage where Christ, as you make it appear, permits his disciples to go away, John 6.67. Learn from the following reality of the case. When Christ, referring to those who had gone away, turns to his disciples and says to them, Will ye also go away? He is positively exhorting them to persevere and continue with Him. For, asking them in grief whether they also would go away, He puts it, as it were, a gentle rain upon them to prevent them from falling away with apostates. And is this, I pray you, the manner in which you convert all such forms of speech as these into permissions? Common sense does, I acknowledge, at first sight take to command to be one thing and to permit to be another. But the fact is that this difference or this sameness is not the same question at issue. The question between us is whether God in unconcern and inactivity merely observes as an uninterested, unconcerned and idle spectator all the things that are done upon earth, or whether from his all-high throne he rules over, rules and governs by his divine command every single action of the sons of men. Or, if the term permission gives you so much satisfaction and pleasure, answer me this question. Does God permit things to be done willingly or unwillingly? That God permits unwillingly is positively denied by Psalm 115, verse 3. The Lord hath done whatever so he willed, or whatever he hath pleased. If, therefore, God permits willingly to represent him as sitting on his throne as a mere unconcerned and unengaged spectator is utterly profane. Wherefore, it follows that God determines and rules by His own counsel whatsoever He wills to be done, but you are for bringing with child's talk this sublime mystery of God down to the rule and measure of common sense. Please turn the tape over and continue listening on side two. And, as you are objecting and arguing, on the other hand, that Christ so taught all the divine lessons of his teaching as to accommodate himself to the capacity of people of common sense, Christ himself flatly denies this and convicts you at once both of lying and of impudence in the matter. Hear you not Christ himself declaring that he spoke in parables to the very end that the common people or people in general might hear and yet not understand? It is indeed quite true that the Holy Spirit does, for our sakes, everywhere speak in a certain manner as a nurse would speak to children, but this is a widely different matter from representing, as you do, that common sense is a capable and competent judge of those profound doctrines which exceed in their incomprehensibility the capacity of angels. Paul proclaims about that the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, neither can he know them." 1 Corinthians 2.14. He therefore admonishes all those to become fools and to resign all their own wisdom, who would profit in the heavenly school. In a word, God everywhere vindicates to himself as to his own all-true light of understanding. Indeed, both days and volumes would fail me if I were to attempt the accumulation of those testimonies of Scripture which condemn common sense as perfect darkness, for they are numberless, and they all declare that light can be obtained from heaven alone, and that whosoever would be wise in the things of God and of his own salvation must renounce all his own wisdom, how much human light soever it may contain. I will content myself, therefore, with one example only. God willed, not that the doctrine of the gospel should be preached unto the Gentiles, and he withheld it from them even until the coming of Christ. And therefore it is that the apostle calls the gospel the mystery that was hidden from ages, nay, that was unknown to the angels themselves in heaven." Colossians 1.26 and 1 Peter 1.12. Notwithstanding such testimonies as these, however, You will persist in thrusting upon us the sufficiency of common sense, which, by its own natural will and judgment, subverts this very doctrine of the apostle altogether. For you will grant nothing to be even probable but that of which common sense may be the estimator, arbiter, and judge. Whereas the prophet, when speaking of the secret providence of God, exclaims, O Lord, how great are thy works, and thy thoughts are very deep! Psalm 92 verse 5. But you, on the contrary, deny that anything is divine but that which you can measure by the rule of your own reason. What becomes then of the remonstrance of the apostle when he is discussing the mighty question now before us? Why doth he make the appeal? Nay, but who art thou, O man? And again, what meaneth his wonder and admiration? O the depth! How unsearchable! etc. etc. The Apostle commands us to wonder and be astonished, because whenever we come to the incomprehensible counsel of God, all mortal senses and powers fail before it, whilst you all the time will admit nothing that you cannot see with your own natural eyes. All the crimes that are committed by any man whatsoever are, by the operation of God, good and just. This is the Columniator's observation and statements on Article 4. Against this fourth article, all your opponents utter aloud that passage of Isaiah 520, Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil. If sin is a good and righteous work of God, it follows that righteousness is an evil and unrighteous work of God, for righteousness is altogether contrary to sin. Again, if sin is righteous, it follows that unrighteousness is righteous, for sin is unrighteousness. Farther, if sin is a work of God, it must follow, your opponents argue, that God doth that which is sinful. In the case of this fourth article, also, you go on grossly lying as before, of which fact I would, at the outset, cautiously warn my readers, and for this reason, that they may form their judgments from the reality of the case rather than from your foul calumnies. Nor do I so much condemn your objections in themselves as they dignantly complain that by altering and perverting my words you malignantly wrest what I did say for the purpose of fanning the flame of hatred against my doctrine, which doctrine is far different from your false representations of it. You enter into a quarrel with me as if I had said that sin was a just or righteous work of God, which doctrine and the idea of it I hold throughout my writings in the utmost detestation. Wherefore, the greater the cleverness of your argument you imagine yourself to possess, the greater is your real purity. You arrive in your argument on this mendaciously stated fourth article at the conclusion that righteousness is evil and that unrighteousness is good, and that God, as you awfully state, the doer of sin, is unjust in punishing that which is his own work, whereas all these monstrous profanities are the fabrications of your own brain. In all such enormities of profaneness I have ever most carefully and with abhorrence condemned and refuted in all my writings. You yourself, however, will one day find to your sorrow how abhorrent a crime it is to trifle and lie in this manner concerning the secret mysteries of God, and that you may clearly understand that you are not dealing with me in this your war against the truth, but with the Supreme Judge of Heaven Himself whose tribunal you may be assured you can never escape. Listen to that which Job testifies, and certainly under none other influence than the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that the doings of Satan and of the robbers who plundered him were the works of God himself. And yet Job never, in an extremist idea, charges God with sin. No such most distant intimation is found in the patriarch. On the contrary, he blesses God's holy name for what he has done by Satan and by those robbers. Job 1.21. So also when the brethren of the innocent Joseph sold him to the Ishmaelites, the deed was evidently a most wicked one. But when Joseph ascribes this to God as his work, so far as he so far as he from imputing sin to God that he considers and lauds his infinite goodness because that by his very means he had given nourishment to his father's whole family Genesis 45 again when Isaiah declares that the Assyrian is the staff of God's wrath in his righteous hand by which he was about to work that terrible slaughter by means of the Assyrian Isaiah 10.15, the prophet thereby makes God the author of that awful destruction, yet without the least imputation of sin to God, or the most distant idea of it. In like manner, when Jeremiah curses those who do the work of God negligently, Jeremiah 48.10, the prophet by the work of the Lord means all that cruel destruction which their enemies wrought upon the Jews. Go then, therefore, and expostulate with the prophet, and declare to him that he has made God to commit sin. In a word, all who are in the least acquainted with the scripture know full well that a whole volume might be made of like passages of the holy scriptures, where God has made the author as commander of the evil and cruel deeds done by men and nations. It is utterly vain to spend more words upon a subject so well known and self-evident. Was it not a signal manifestation of the grace of God when He spared not His own Son? Was it not an equally marvelous exhibit of grace in Christ when He delivered up Himself? Now wilt thou really here affirm with thy foul and profane mouth that God sinned in thus ordaining the deed of this crucifixion of His Son? in ordaining the men also who should do the deed, Acts 4.28? Was God's work of the offering up of His only begotten Son a sin in Him? Oh no! All godly persons very easily untie this knot as Augustine does in the following clear and striking manner. Quote, When the Father gave up the Son, when the Lord gave up His own body, when Judas delivered up the Lord, How was it that, in this one same delivering up, God was righteous and man guilty? The reason was that, in this one same thing which God and man did, the motive was not the same from which God and man acted. Hence it is that Peter, without hesitation, declared that Pontius Pilate and Judas and the other wicked people of the Jews had done what God's hand and his counsel had aforedetermined to be done. As Peter had just before said, him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. Acts 2.23 Now if you turn your back on the term foreknowledge and definitiveness of the term determinate counsel will floor you at once. Nor indeed does the former passage leave the least degree of ambiguity behind it, namely that Pontius Pilate and the Jews and the wicked people did whatsoever God's hand in his counsel had before determined to be done. Now, if your understanding cannot hold a mystery and a secret so deep as these, why do you not wonder and exclaim with the Apostle Paul, O the Depth, why do you daringly trample upon them as an infuriated madman? Had you been of a teachable mind, you would have found in my writings explications of this deep matter far more copious than I can here repeat. But my present object is only to blunt the edge of your impudence that it might not disturb the minds of the weak." Article 5, that is, Columni No. 5. No adultery, theft, or murder is committed without the intervention of the will of God. The scripture openly testifies that evil doings are designed not only by the will but by the authority of God. The Columniator's statement and observations. Against this fifth and sixth articles, your opponents bring these and many other arguments. If, they say, God will sin, God is the author of sin. And again, if God will sin, they argue, It is not the devil that will sin, for the devil is the mere servant of God. And they affirm that if God's will sins, he must be inferior to many men, for many men are unwilling to sin. Nay, the nearer any man approaches to the very law of nature, the less he will sin. Else, how is it that Paul says, The good that I would, I do not, but the evil that I would not, that I do. If Paul wills sin by nature, as Calvin saith, how is it that Paul does not will what God wills? And how is it that Paul wills that good which God, according to Calvin, does not will? Finally, your opponents ask of you, what scripture testifies that evil doings are designed of God, not only by His will, but by His authority? And this is the reply of Mr. John Calvin to Articles 5 and 6 and to the Columniator's statements and observations thereon. In the case of this fifth article, it is not without the peculiar intervention of the providence of God that you have pretended to give the reference to the passage in my Institutes from which you falsely assert it is extracted. In this instance, readers will see that I state these things in these articles, that is, calumnies, which my adversaries bring against my doctrines, just as, and as faithfully as, if they had themselves stated them. Now, seething as you do upon this mutilated passage, do you not deserve that everyone who passages you should spit in your face? And though you do not attempt to offer any reference in the case of the sixth article, yet your real audacity takes a wider leap still. Now tell me, did I, who in all my writings so reverently and solemnly declare that whenever and wherever sin is mentioned, the name of God should be kept in all solemnly wide out of the way, did I ever or anywhere assert that evil doings were perpetuated not only by the design but by the authority of God? Most certainly nothing can be uttered too powerful or too severe in condemnation of such monstrous blasphemy. I am willing to hear all that you or any man can say in its abhorrence. Let not my name, therefore, ever be associated with its horrible profanity. How successful you are in deceiving fools I know not, but of one thing I am certain, that if anyone will just take the pains to compare your foul inventions With my genuine writings, your dishonesty and wickedness will leave you painted in your true and inexorable colors. You profanely contend that if God loves sin, He must hate righteousness, and you utter many things in the same line of profanity. And why do you utter them but that you might be forced at last to subscribe, under your own convictions, to my written doctrines? For not yesterday only, nor the day before yesterday, but for these many years past, I have written and spoken concerning Job thus. If in the spoliation of that patriarch by robbers the work of God and of Satan and of the plunders were one and the same in the act abstractly considered, how is it that God is clear of all that fault, as he sacredly is, of which both Satan and the robbers are guilty? Why, it is thus, if in the actions of men an entire difference exists when the motives and ends of those actions are duly considered, so that the cruelty of that man is condemned who barbarously pierces the ears of a crow, or the sacrilege of him who kills a crane, a bird held in so much religious veneration among the ancients, while the sentence of that judge is lauded who sanctifies his hands by putting to death a murderer. Why should the position of God be held inferior to that of man? Why should not His infinite righteousness vindicate Him and hold Him separate from a participation in the guilt of evildoing men? Only let readers cursorily observe what I am now about to subjoin. Nay, let them carefully read the whole of that part of my institutes where I am discoursing on the providence of God, and he will, in a moment, see that all thy cloudy-minded objections discussed, exposed, answered, and refuted. Let readers consider also, if they may please, what I have written in my commentary on the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, men I have shown have there shown, when they commit theft or murder, sin against God because they are thieves and murderers, and because in their theft and in their murders there is wicked design. But God, who makes sovereign use of their wickedness, stands in an infinitely different and in an all-high position above all men in acts and things. And the objects and ends of God are infinitely different from and higher than those of men. God's purpose is, by that wicked acts of men, to chastise some and to exercise the patience of others. Hence, in all these his uses of the evil doings of men, God never deviates, in the remotest degree, from his own nature, that is, from his own infinitely perfect rectitude. If, then, an evil deed is thus to be estimated according to its end and object, it is fully manifest that God is not, nor can be, the author of sin. This ends the reading of tape number four of A Defense of the Secret Providence of God by John Calvin. Please go to the next tape in the series. Thank you. This Reformation Audio Resource is a production of Stillwater's Revival Books. Many free resources, as well as SWRB's complete mail-order catalog containing classic and contemporary Puritan Reformed books, CDs, and much more at great discounts, is on the web at www.swrb.com. 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