The Institution of Christian Religion

Sometime in deed they do not deny, being overcome by very experience, how hardly man stablisheth reason to reign as Queen within himself, while sometime he is tickled with enticements of pleasures, sometime deceived with false semblance of good things, sometime importunately stricken with immoderate affections, & violently haled out of the way,¹ as it were with ropes of strings of sinews as Plato sayeth. For which reason Cicero saith, that these sparks given by nature, are with perverse opinions & evil manners by & by quenched: But when such diseases have ones gotten places in the minds of men, they grant that they do more outrageously overflow, than that they easily may be restrained: & they stick not to compare them to wild horses which throwing away reason as it were casting the Chariot driver, do range unrulyly and without measure. But this they make no question of,² that virtues and vices are in our own power. For if (say they) it be in our choice to do this or that, then is it also in our choice not to do. Now if it be in our choice not to do, then is it also to do. but of free choice we seem to do those things that we do, & to forbear those things that we forbear. Therefore if we do any good thing when we list, we may likewise leave it undone: if we do any evil, we may also eschew the same. Yea some of them have burst forth into so great licentiousness, that they have boasted that it is in deed that Gods gift that we live,³ but our own that we live well & holily. And thence cometh that saying of Cicero in the person of Cotta:⁴ because every man him self getteth virtue to himself, therefore never any of the wise men did thank God for it. For (saith he) for virtue we be praised, and in virtue we glory, which should not be if it were the gift of God, and not of our selves. And a little after. This is the judgement of all men ⟨p. 13⟩that fortune is to be asked of God, but wisdom to be taken of himself. This therefore is the sum of the opinion of all the Philosophers, that the reason of mans understanding is sufficient for right governance: that Will being subject to it, is in deed moved by Sense to evil things. But even as it hath free election, so can it not be stopped, but that it follow reason for her guide in all things.