But my Country has in its Wisdom contrived for me the most insignificant Office that ever the invention of Man contrived or his Imagination conceived: and as I can do neither good nor Evil, I must be borne away by Others and meet the common Fate.

If you don't change the direction you are going, then you're likely to end up where you're heading…

In discussing the subject of free will, the question is not, whether external obstacles will permit a man to execute what he has internally resolved, but whether, in any matter whatever, he has a free power of judging and of willing.

Whenever God is pleased to make way for his providence, he even in external matters so turns and bends the wills of men, that whatever the freedom of their choice may be, it is still subject to the disposal of God.

God neither wills nor decrees anything without having long before directed it to its proper end.

Therefore they escape by the shift that this is done only with God's permission, not also by his will;3 but he, openly declaring that he is the doer, repudiates that evasion. However, that men can accomplish nothing except by God's secret command, that they cannot by deliberating accomplish anything except what he has already decreed with himself and determines by his secret direction, is proved by innumerable and clear testimonies.

But if God has set his seat in the sanctuary of the heavens in order to rule the universe, it follows that he by no means ignores earthly affairs, but controls them with the highest reason and wisdom.

The disposition of the heart is man's, but the preparation of the tongue is the Lord's." [Prov. 16:1, 9, conflated.] It is an absurd folly that miserable men take it upon themselves to act without God, when they cannot even speak except as he wills!

Hence the unskillful rashly infer, that man did not sin by free choice.

If everything went according to their own plans, they would never know what it means to follow God.

Each year, month, and day is governed by a new, a special, providence of God

Let us imagine, for example, a merchant who, entering a wood with a company of faithful men, unwisely wanders away from his companions, and in his wandering comes upon a robber's den, falls among thieves, and is slain. His death was not only foreseen by God's eye, but also determined by his decree. For it is not said that he foresaw how long the life of each man would extend, but that he determined and fixed the bounds that men cannot pass [Job 14:5]. Yet