An Answer to a Great Number of Blasphemous Cavillations

except we believe this, the beginning of our faith is endangered, by the which we profess our selves to believe in God the father almighty &c.

except we beleue this, the beginning of our faith is indangered, by the which we professe our selues to beleue in God the father almighti• &c.

And in the end to answer to these calumnies which ye have taken forth of Pighius that papist, John Calvin concludeth, if ever I had said that it came to pass by the instruction or motion of the spirit of God, that the first man did alienate him self from God, and not that rather I have in all places defended, that man was pricked thereto by instigation of the devil and by the motion of his own heart, then meritably might Pighius and his complices have railed against me. But seeing that I removing from God the very cause of the action, do also remove from him all crime, so that man only is subject aswell to the crime as to the punishment: wickedly and maliciously is this laid to my charge that I should say that mans defection and fall is one of gods works. But yet lest that one thing should appear to lack of our full doctrine, I will recite his words, which he writeth against the libertines in the 14 chapter of that work, we do not deny (sayeth he) but that all things are done by the will of God. In so much that when we declare wherefore he is called omnipotent, we give to him an effectual power in all his creatures, and we teach ⟨p. 157⟩that as once he created the universal world, so also that he governeth the same. And that his hand is always at the work, that he might keep all things in their estate, and dispose them after his will. And to the end that I may expre••e the same more easily, I say, that God is to be considered three manner of ways to work in the administration or his creature.¹