unavoidable calamity from which only God’s mercy can deliver them.” People are sinful, Calvin argued, “not merely by the defect of depraved custom, but also by depravity of nature.” Outside of God’s mercy, “there is no salvation for man, for in himself he is lost and forsaken.… it is futile to seek anything good in our nature” (Institutes, 2.3.2).11 Because the will is in “bondage to sin,” Calvin held, it “cannot move toward good, much less apply itself thereto; for a movement of this sort is the