Note 385 — CCCI.—To the Seigneurs of Geneva.[384]
Reading edition
"Since we are all corrupt and contaminate by vice, it cannot be but God must hate us, and that not with tyrannical cruelty, but with reasonable equity.... That all the children of Adam come forward to contend and dispute against their Creator, because by his eternal Providence, they were devoted, before they were born, to perpetual calamity. When, on the contrary, God brings them to know themselves, how can they murmur at that? If they have all been taken out of a corrupt mass, it is no way marvellous that they are liable to condemnation. Let them not therefore accuse God of iniquity, because by his eternal decree they are ordained to condemnation, to which their very nature makes them amenable."—Institution of the Christian Religion, edit, of 1554, p. 461.