In various works Calvin has maintained the all-inclusiveness of the decree of God. This, Pighius had argued, was in effect to make God the author of sin. Calvin denies vigorously that he makes God the author of sin. “I have with equal constancy, asserted that the eternal death to which man rendered himself subject so proceeded from his own fault that God cannot, in any way, be considered the author of it.”11 Here Calvin makes the distinction between remote and proximate causes. As the proximate