Controversial Sayings

Free will is an empty term.

Free-will cannot will good and of necessity serves sin.

For the will is so overwhelmed by wickedness and so pervaded by vice and corruption that it cannot in any way escape to honorable exertion or devote itself to righteousness.

For we do not say that man is dragged unwillingly into sinning, but that because his will is corrupt he is held captive under the yoke of sin and therefore of necessity wills in an evil way.

Therefore, the bondage of the will to sin remains and yet such slavery is a voluntary and willful captivity.

All are not created on equal terms, but some are preordained to eternal life, others to eternal damnation; and, accordingly, as each has been created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been predestinated to life or to death.

God himself has explicitly instructed us to kill heretics, to smite with the sword any city that abandons the worship of the true faith revealed by Him.

Many people have accused me of such ferocious cruelty that I would like to kill again the man I have destroyed. Not only am I indifferent to their comments, but I rejoice in the fact that they spit in my face.

God's justice or righteousness is manifest as the reprobate receive the eternal punishment they deserve.

The seed of the Word of God takes root and grows fruitful only in those whom the Lord, by his eternal election, has predestined to be his children and heirs of the heavenly kingdom. To all others who, by the same counsel of God before the constitutio…

The natural gifts were corrupted in man through sin, but his supernatural gifts were stripped from him.

Let that ethical philosophy therefore of free-will be far from a Christian mind.

This is plainly to ascribe divinity to 'free will.'

For I stay not to consider the extravagance of those who say that grace is offered equally and promiscuously to all.

God's ultimate discrimination rests solely on the freedom and sovereign will of God.

It is not on the basis of human works, whether performed or foreseen, that God decrees to elect some based on unmerited grace and pass by (preterition) others based on proximate sinful works.

We shall never be clearly persuaded, as we ought to be, that our salvation flows from the wellspring of God's free mercy until we come to know his eternal election, which illumines God's grace by this contrast: that he does not indiscriminately adopt…

The human race is condemned to everlasting hell for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. In choosing to save some and choosing not to save others, it would appear to be no different to reprobation (double predestination), where some …

The reprobate are those whom God has determined to leave in their sins, and consequently to deliver to eternal perdition.

For the mind of man is so entirely alienated from the righteousness of God that it can neither conceive, desire, nor design anything but what is vicious, perverted, impure, and iniquitous.