26
Aug

Bullinger: God Does Not Will Evil

   Posted by: CalvinandCalvinism   in Divine Permission of Sin

Bullinger:

Furthermore as the wise man gives counsel: seek not or search not for things that are greater & harder then thou art able to do. And such things as are commanded thee of God, those devoutly consider of, and be not curious in many of his works, for it is not needful that thou should behold his secrets with thy eyes. For many have been deceived and confounded through their own vain persuasion. And he that loves danger shall perish therein. Wherefore the best & plainest way is to believe that God is just, and to confess that he wills not that which is evil, much less does evil. For when as he forbad man the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would not doubtless that man should be eating transgress the law and due.

For David says: “Thou art not that God whom wickedness pleases, and with whom the evil are familiar, thou hatest all them that work evil.” And Solomon says that God made man good, but men entangle themselves with infinite questions: and the same Solomon says, God neither made death nor destruction, neither is delighted with the death of the living. For God created man unto immortality, and made him after his own image, but through the envy of the devil death entered into the world.

But if these and other such like places of Holy Scripture come to any man’s remembrance, namely that GOD hardens the hearts, blinds the eyes, gives up unto a reprobate mind &c., the Christian reader must consider that God does all things justly, and that he does wrong to no man. Saint Paul in this controversy puts back men’s objections in these words, “what art though O man that reasonest with God? shall the work say to the workman that made it, ‘why hast thou made me so?’” As though it were not lawful for the Potter of the same lump of clay to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor? And David says: “God is just in all his ways, and holy in all his works.”

Henry Bullinger, Common Places of Christian Religion, (Imprinted at London by Tho. East, and H. Middleton, for George Byshop, 1572), 48-49.

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