Qōheleṯ agrees: ‘God made humankind upright …’ (Ec. 7:29). Nature, in the strict sense of what makes men and women human, the essence of being a particular kind of creature, cannot be termed evil. The phrase ‘natural sinfulness’ conceals a paradox, which Tertullian (De anima 41) noticed (‘The corruption of nature is another nature’).33 Calvin deliberately developed this thought: ‘We say, then, that man is corrupted by a natural viciousness, but not one which proceeded from nature’ (Institutes II.i.