An Answer to a Great Number of Blasphemous Cavillations

That man which here suffereth misery and much calamity, yea and that also shall be adjudged to the fire inextinguible, is created of God, or (as you affirm) is the birth of God: I suppose your selves will not deny. And that he suffereth all miseries; by gods just judgements, and by his will expressed in his word, the scripture b•areth record. For God sayeth to the woman, in sorrow and dolour shalt thou bear thy children. To the man: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread, and also: cursed is the earth for thy sake.¹ Which (and many more places) plainly witness, that God hath inflicted pain upon man whom he hath created. You answer: That did God for the sin of man, I confess: But yet is your foot fast in the snare. For after sin, man ceased not to be the creature, & (as ye will term him) the birth of God If then God; be subject to the law of nature (as before we have said) and now again repeat, that your vanity and ignorance may the more appear, so that he is bound to do the self same thing to his births, that nature moveth us to do to our children. I ask first why did God suffer man created to his own image to fall in to sin? assuredly no natural father will wittingly and willingly suffer his children to fall into a pit or dungeon to destruction. And secondarily I ask, why did not God (who is omnipotent, having all wisdom and goodness) provide an other medicine for man, then by death to overcome so many miseries? Thirdly if God would that none should be borne to misery, why did he not clearly purge the nature of Adam? why did he not stay that venom and corruption in our first father, why did he permit it to infect all his posterity? There is no shift that here can serve you. For if you say, God was provoked by the sins of the posterity, which he did foresee to be in them, so to do: I answer, that he foresaw nothing, which his eternal and infinite power might not have removed and remedied, if so had pleased his godly wisdom: for then as now, was he the God. who alone may do what so ever he will in heaven and in earth. And further I say, that the fountain being shut up, the flowing of sin by ⟨p. 69⟩natural propagation should have ceased. To gods permission we shall after answer.

That man which here suffereth miserie and much clamitie, yea and that also shalbe adiuged to the fyre inextīguible, is created of God, or (as you affirme) is the birth of God: I suppose your selues will not deny. And that he suffereth all miseries; by gods iust iudgementes, and by his will expressed in his worde, the scripture bareth record. For God saieth to the woman, in sorow and dolor shalt thou beare thy children. To the man: In the sweate of thy face shalt thow eate thy bread, and also: cursed is the earth for thy sake.