Quotes

Augustine: "God wills for good what men will for evil"
(Enchiridion on Faith, Hope and Love, cap. 101, cited in Calvin, Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, X.14) 

 

Luther: "God foreknows nothing by contingency, but that He foresees, purposes, and does all things according to His immutable, eternal, and infallible will"
(Bondage of the Will, section 9)

 

Luther: "all things depend upon the will of God alone"
(Bondage of the Will, section 92)

 

Luther: "His will...without which nothing is done"
(Bondage of the Will, section 80)

 

Luther: "God would not be such if He was not almighty, and if anything could be done without Him" (Bondage of the Will, section 92)

 

Luther: "the will of God...is the principal cause of all things which take place"
(Bondage of the Will, section 92)

 

Luther: "God foreknows and foreordains all things"
(Bondage of the Will, section 162)

 

Calvin: "nothing at all in the world is undertaken without his determination"
(Institutes I.16.3)

 

Calvin: "there is no random power, or agency, or motion in the creatures, who are so governed by the secret counsel of God, that nothing happens but what he has knowingly and willingly decreed"
(Institutes I.16.3)

 

Calvin: "Whatever things are done wrongly and unjustly by man, these very things are the right and just works of God"
(Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, X.7)

 

Calvin: "[as to] the suggestion that evils come to be not by His will, but merely by His permission. Of course, so far as they are evils…they are not pleasing to God. But it is quite frivolous refuge to say that God idly permits them, when Scripture shows Him not only willing but the author of them"
(Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, X.11)

 

Calvin: "there can be no doubt that God is the chief and principal cause of all things"
(Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, X.12)

 

Calvin: "How then is God to be exempted from the blame to which Satan with his instruments is liable?...What I have maintained about the diversity of causes must not be forgotten: the proximate cause is one thing, the remote cause another....For what man wickedly perpetrates, incited by ambition or avarice or lust or some other depraved motive, since God does it by his hand with a righteous though perhaps hidden purpose—this cannot be equated with the term sin."
(Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, X.14)

 

Calvin: "Must we then impute the guilt of sin to God, or invent a double will for Him so that He falls out with Himself? I have shown that He wills the same as the criminal and the wicked, but in a different way. So now it is to be maintained that there is diversity of kinds while He wills in the same way, so that out of the variety which perplexes us a harmony may be beautifully contrived."
(Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, X.15)

 

Zanchi: "the Supreme Being [is]...the great cause of all causes else, Himself dependent on none" (Absolute Predestination, chapter 5)

 

Westminster Assembly: "God from all eternity did by the most and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin; nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established."

(Westminster Confession 3:1)

 

Westminster Assembly: "Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass...yet hath he not decreed any thing because he foresaw it as future"

(Westminster Confession 3:2)

 

Westminster Assembly: "in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first Cause, all things come to pass immutably, and infallibly; yet, by the same providence, He ordereth them to fall out, according to the nature of second causes"
(Westminster Confession 5:2 - a 'second cause' is a caused-cause)

 

Toplady: "Whatever comes to pass, comes to pass by virtue of the absolute omnipotent will of God, which is the primary and supreme cause of all things"
(Observations on the Divine Attributes, Position 6)

 

Toplady: "The will of God is so the cause of all things, as to be itself without cause, for nothing can be the cause of that which is the cause of everything. So that the Divine will is the ne plus ultra of all our inquiries; when we ascend to that, we can go no farther. Hence we find every matter resolved ultimately into the mere sovereign pleasure of God, as the spring and occasion of whatsoever is done in heaven and earth. 'Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight' (Matt. 11.25)."
(Observations on the Divine Attributes, Position 7)

 

Herman Hoeksema: "With regard to the sinful deeds of men and devils, we must not speak only of God's permission but also of his determination"
(Reformed Dogmatics, Vol. 1, Ch. 10, Section 6)

 

Benjamin Ramsbottom: "God's permission is also His commission"
(Sermon)

 

Benjamin Ramsbottom: "What God permits He also commands."
(Sermon)