It may be thought odd that predestination has been mentioned only in passing. The explanation for the neglect is (a) that Calvin nowhere used predestination as a starting-point or underpinning either for his political thought or for his ecclesiology, as far as the visible church is concerned, and (b) that its place in the economy of Calvin's theology is not nearly as important as the number of pages he devoted to the topic might suggest. A discussion of predestination in all its aspects would require another book and another author; here we are concerned with it solely in its relationship, or lack of it, to Calvin's political thought.

We have seen that predestination rated barely a mention in the first edition of the Institution, but that a separate article was devoted to it in the 1537 Catechisme. In the 1539 Institution, a very substantial chapter ‘Concerning predestination and the providence of God’ appeared; it was lodged, for no obvious reason, between another new chapter on the relationship between the Old and the New Testament and a chapter on prayer. In the 1559 edition, the chapter was split up: predestination was allotted to book 3, chs 21–4, providence to book 1, chs 16–17, and the lines which had linked the two themes were suppressed. We shall return to the significance of this in a moment.