Well, since Calvin makes statements like these, how can any of his followers claim otherwise? “Everything is controlled by God’s secret purpose, and nothing can happen except by his knowledge and will.” (The Institutes of Christian Religion)
Calvin writes: “What we must prove is that single events are ordered by God and that every event comes from his intended will. Nothing happens by chance."
“But where it is a matter of men’s counsels, wills, endeavours, and exertions, there is greater difficulty in seeing how the providence of God rules here too, so that nothing happens but by His assent and that men can deliberately do nothing unless He inspire it.” (Concerning the Eternal Predestination of God, pp.171-172
“Does God work in the hearts of men, directing their plans and moving their wills this way and that, so that they do nothing but what He has ordained?
“But of all the things which happen, the first cause is to be understood to be His will, because He so governs the natures created by Him, as to determine all the counsels and the actions of men to the end decreed by Him."
Actually, Hyper Calvinists seem to be the only ones who take this theology to it's logical conclusion.
6) 16th Century
William Tyndale: "they go and set up free-will with the heathen philosophers and say that a man’s free will is the cause why God chooseth and not another, contrary to all scriptures."
Robert Ferrar (Welsh Bishop of St. David's martyred in Carmarthen on 30 March, 1555) with ten other reforming ministers: "... we disallow papistical doctrines of free will, of works of supererogation, of merits, of the necessity of auricular confession, and satisfaction to God-wards."
John Knox: "… the general consent of all that sect is that God (by his foreknowledge, counsel, and wisdom) has no assured election, neither yet any certain reprobation, but that every man may elect or reprobate himself by his own free will, which he has (say they) to do good or evil … [All these things are] forged by their own brains, and polished by the finest of their wits, when yet in very deed they are but the rotten heresies of … Pelagius, long ago confuted by Augustine …"
John Knox: "Ye [Anabaptists] be proud contemners of the free grace of God offered to man in Christ Jesus. For with the Pelagians and Papists ye are become teachers of free will, and defenders of your own righteousness" (
An Answer to a Great Number of Blasphemous Cavillations Written by an Anabaptist and Adversary to God's Eternal Predestination [London: Thomas Charde, 1591], p. 121).
Jerome Zanchius: "No free will of the creature can resist the will of God" (quoting Augustine).
7) 17th Century
Henry Ainsworth: "we grant evil freewill (or freewill to evil) is remaining in all natural men: we believe that freewill to good, is from grace and regeneration."
Daniel Featley: "many men have too much Free-will, and take to themselves too free liberty now a days to advance and maintain free will."
John Preston: "not by the power of free will but by the infused grace of His spirit."
Peter Moulin: "It is proved out of the holy scriptures that an unregenerate man is altogether destitute of the power and liberty of his will, in those things that pertain to faith and salvation."
John Owen: "the whole Pelagian poison of free-will … a clear exaltation of the old idol free-will into the throne of God … That the decaying estate of Christianity have invented."
John Owen: Free will is "corrupted nature's deformed darling, the Pallas or beloved self-conception of darkened minds" (
Works, vol. 10, p. 150).
William Jenkyn: "The bending of men's hearts to believe and persevere are the supernatural fruits of God’s eternal decree, and not the natural fruits of man’s depraved and frail free will."
John Trapp: "The friends of free will are the enemies of free grace."
Thomas Watson: "This crown of free will is fallen from our head" and "If it be God’s purpose that saves then it is not free will."
Francis Turretin: "The word "freewill" (as also "self-determining power" [
autexousiou] used by the Greek Fathers) does not occur in Scripture … I Cor 7:37 does not mean freedom of the will."
8) 18th Century
Matthew Henry: "The counsels and decrees of God do not truckle to the frail and fickle will of man."
Augustus Toplady: "A man’s free will cannot cure him even of the toothache, or a sore finger; and yet he madly thinks it is in its power to cure his soul."
George Whitefield: "Man is nothing; he hath a free will to go to hell, but none to go to heaven, till God worketh in him" and "you dishonour God by denying election. You plainly make salvation depend, not on God’s ‘free grace’ but on Man’s ‘free will.’"
William Huntington: "This brought me out of the free-will fog, and truth shone in my heart like a comet … from that moment I waged war against free will."
9) 19th Century
J. N. Darby, early leader of the Plymouth Brethren: "This re-appearance of the doctrine of freewill serves to support that of the pretension of the natural man to be not irremediably fallen, for this is what such doctrine tends to. All who have never been deeply convicted of sin, all persons in whom this conviction is based on gross external sins, believe more or less in freewill" (
Man’s So-called Freewill, p. 1).
10) Charles Spurgeon
"I will go as far as Martin Luther, where he says, ‘If any man ascribes anything of salvation, even the very least thing, to the free will of man, he knows nothing of grace, and he has not learned Jesus Christ rightly.’"
"Free-will doctrine—what does it? It magnifies man into God. It declares God’s purposes a nullity, since they cannot be carried out unless men are willing. It makes God’s will a waiting servant to the will of man, and the whole covenant of grace dependent on human action. Denying election on the ground of injustice, it holds God to be a debtor to sinners."
"His will cannot be neutral or ‘free’ to act contrary to his nature."
"Free will has carried many souls to hell, but yet never a soul to heaven."
"I do not come into this pulpit hoping that perhaps somebody will of his own free will return to Christ. My hope lies in another quarter. I hope that my Master will lay hold of some of them and say, "You are mine, and you shall be mine. I claim you for myself." My hope arises from the freeness of grace, and not from the freedom of the will."
11) 20th Century
Arthur W. Pink: "if the will is their servant then it is not sovereign, and if the will is not sovereign, we certainly cannot predicate ‘freedom’ of it."
Louis Berkhof: "Freedom of the will is a psychological fiction."
John Gerstner: "We have already shown that there is no such thing as free will. That’s a will-o’-the–wisp. You never make choices without reasons, not as a responsible or a rational person" (
A Primer on Free Will, p. 11).
W. E. Best: "God’s character is maligned by every person who believes in free will."
Gordon H. Clark: "The Bible consistently denies free will."
R. C. Sproul: "The neutral view of free will is impossible. It involves choice without desire."
James White: "Then why do you embrace Christ, and your moral Buddhist neighbour across the street does not? Are you smarter than he is? More spiritually sensitive? Better, in any way? What makes you to differ? Is the Holy Spirit working just as hard on him as He did on you? If so, why do you believe, and he does not? No matter how hard you try, you can’t avoid coming to the conclusion that, in a 'free will' system of salvation, those who believe do so because there is something different about them. If the Spirit is bringing equal conviction to bear upon each individual, the only deciding factor, given equality in everything else, is something in the person himself. I believe the only possible difference between the redeemed in heaven and the guilty, condemned, punished sinner in hell is a five-letter word ... It’s called 'grace.'"
Steven Houck: "This free-willism is a serious error which is contrary to the Holy Scriptures."