John Calvin Against Pighius: God Does Not Desire the Salvation of All Men

Let our readers hence gather how much religion and conscience Pighius has in dealing with the holy Scripture! He then adds, from the Psalm, "The Lord is good to all" (Psalm 145:9; cxlv. 9), from which he concludes that, therefore, all were ordained unto eternal life. Now, if this be true, the kingdom of heaven is open for dogs and asses!   --  John Calvin

Pighius contends that men were so immediately created unto salvation that no counsel of God concerning the contrary event, namely, his destruction, preceded his creation. As if the Lord did not foresee before man was created what his future condition would be! And as if He did not afore determine what it was His will should be done! Man, that he might be the image of God, was adorned from the first with the light of reason and with rectitude of nature. Therefore (as our opponent would reason), God being (to speak reverently) blind, foresaw not all events, but waited in doubt and suspense for the issue of those events! Such is Pighius theological reasoning! Such are the antecedents and consequents of his logic! Hence he boldly concludes, from his view of the end of man's creation, that God so disposed the creation of all men that they should all, at their creation, be made (without distinction, difference, or discrimination) partakers of His goodness and blessedness. But godly minds can by no means whatever be brought to reconcile God's election and reprobation of men thus. They cannot harmonise by such carnal reasoning the voluntary sin of man and the eternal purpose of God. They cannot see, with these human eyes, how it was that man should be placed in that condition when first created, that he himself, falling by his own will, should be the cause of his own destruction; and yet that it was so ordained by the secret and eternal purpose of God that this voluntary destruction to the human race, and to all the posterity of Adam, should be a cause for the saints humbling themselves before God, and worshipping His eternal purpose in the whole. For, although it pleased God thus to ordain the whole, yet man did not the less willingly, on his part, hurl himself into this headlong ruin, who, nevertheless, had been endued with an upright nature, and had been made in the image of God. But I would repeat my being perfectly aware how much absurdity and irreconcilable contradiction these deep things seem to profane persons to carry with them. Nevertheless, let one conscience suffice us in the place of a thousand such witnesses. To which conscience, if we duly listen, we shall be ashamed not to confess that man perished justly, seeing that he chose rather to follow Satan than God!

But let us now hear Pighius' PROOFS of his above views, arguments and conclusions. In these he labours to shew that salvation was ordained for all men without distinction or difference. "If it were not so (he says), the Holy Spirit speaks falsely when He declares that God is the Father of all men" (Malachi 2:10; Mal. ii. 10). The prophet is there treating of marriage, the faith of which many husbands, at that time, violated. Malachi is reminding such violators that God is the avenger of conjugal infidelity. Let our readers hence gather how much religion and conscience Pighius has in dealing with the holy Scripture! He then adds, from the Psalm, "The Lord is good to all" (Psalm 145:9; cxlv. 9), from which he concludes that, therefore, all were ordained unto eternal life. Now, if this be true, the kingdom of heaven is open for dogs and asses! For the Psalmist is not magnifying that goodness of God only which He shews to man, but that also which He extends to all His works. But why should not Pighius thus fight for his brethren?

Calvin's Calvinism, Section III