"My intention now is, to refute an opinion which has very generally obtained -- an opinion which, while it concedes to God some blind and equivocal movement, withholds what is of principle moment -- namely the disposing and directing of everything to its proper end by incomprehensible wisdom. By withholding government, it makes God the ruler of the world in name only, not in reality. For what, I ask, is meant by government, if it be not to preside so as to regulate the destiny of that over which you preside?
"In this way, they make man a partner with God -- God, by his energy, impressing man with the movement by which he can act, agreeably to the nature conferred upon him, while man voluntarily regulates his own actions. In short, their doctrine is, that the world, the affairs of men, and men themselves, are governed by the power, but not by the decree of God. I say nothing of the Epicureans (a pest with which the world has always been plagued), who dream of an inert and idle God, and others, not a whit sounder, who of old feigned that God rules the upper regions of the air, but leaves the inferior to Fortune."
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian
Religion, Book 1, Ch. 16.