From other passages, where God is said to bend or draw Satan himself and all the wicked to his will, there emerges a more difficult question. For carnal sense can hardly comprehend how in acting through them he does not contract some defilement from their transgression, and even in a common undertaking can be free of all blame, and indeed can justly condemn his ministers. Hence the distinction was devised between doing and permitting because to many this difficulty seemed inexplicable, that Satan and all the impious are so under God’s hand and power that he directs their malice to whatever end seems good to him, and uses their wicked deeds to carry out his judgments. And perhaps the moderation of those whom the appearance of absurdity alarms would be excusable, except that they wrongly try to clear God’s justice of every sinister mark by upholding a falsehood. It seems absurd to them for man, who will soon be punished for his blindness, to be blinded by God’s will and command. Therefore they escape by the shift that this is done only with God’s permission, not also by his will; 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.
The next two paragraphs cite a number of testimonies from the Scriptures to prove the point. Calvin then concludes the section with these words:
Those who are moderately versed in the Scriptures see that for the sake of brevity I have put forward only a few of many testimonies. Yet from these it is more than evident that they babble and talk absurdly who, in place of God’s providence substitute bare permission—as if God sat in a watch-tower awaiting chance events, and his judgments thus depended upon human will.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion Vol. 1 (The Westminster Press, 1960, John T. McNeill, Ed.). XVIII, 1, p. 228-231.
And from Calvin’s Calvinism.
It will be desirable to consider, in the first place, that the will of God is the great cause of all things that are done in the whole world; and yet, that God is not the author of the evils that are done therein. But I will not say, with Augustine—which, however, I readily acknowledge to have been truly said by him—”in sin or evil there is nothing positive.” For this is an acuteness of argument which, to many, may not be satisfactory. I would rather assume another principle of argument, and say, “Those things which are vainly or unrighteously done by man are, rightly and righteously, the works of God!” And if this should appear to some, at first sight, to be paradoxical or self-contradictory, let not such be so fastidious or hasty as not to inquire, with me, into the Word of God, and see how the Divine matter stands as viewed in that glass.
John Calvin, Calvin’s Calvinism: Treatises on the Eternal Predestination of God and the Secret Providence of God. (Reformed Free Publishing Association). 233.