The Institution of Christian Religion

First therefore let the readers learn, that Providence is called it, not §4wherewith God idly beholdeth from heaven what is done in the world, but wherewith as guiding the stern he sitteth and ordereth all things that come to pass. So doth it no less belong to his hands than to his eyes. For when Abraham said unto his son. God shall provide, he meant not only that God did foreknow the success then to come,¹ but that he did cast the care of a thing to him unknown upon the will of God, which is wont to bring things doubtful and confused to a certain end. Whereby followeth that Providence consisteth in doing: for to much fondly do many trifle in talking of bare foreknowledge. Their error is not altogether so gross which give unto God a government but disordered, and without advised choice, (as I have before said,) that is to say such as whirleth and driveth about with a general motion the frame of the world with all the parts thereof, but doeth not peculiarly direct the doing of every creature. Yet is this error not tolerable. For as they teach, it may be (notwithstanding this Providence which they call universal) that all creatures may be moved by chance, or man may turn himself hither or thither by free choice of his will. And so do they part the government between God & man, that God by his power inspireth ⟨image 68⟩into man a motion whereby he may work according to the nature planted in him, and man ordereth his own doings by his own voluntary advise: Briefly they mean that the world, mens matters, and men themselves are governed by the power, but not by the appointment of God. I speak not of the Epicureans (which pestilence the world hath alway been filled with) which dream of an idle and slothful God: and other as mad as they, which in old time imagined that God did so rule above the middle region of the air, that he left things beneath to Fortune: for against so evident madness the dumb creatures themselves do sufficiently cry out. For now my purpose is to confute that opinion that is in a manner commonly believed, which giving to God a certain blind, and I wot not what uncertain motion, taketh from him the principal thing, that is by his incomprehensible wisdom to direct and dispose all things to their end: and so in name only and not in deed it maketh God a ruler of the world, because it taketh from him the government of it.