Our God: A Temperate and Skillful Rider

Calvin says that God is "like a temperate and skillful rider," while "the devil has seized the saddle, like an ignorant and rash rider."

He notes, "Augustine (in Psa 31 and 33) compares the human will to a horse preparing to start, and God and the devil to riders.

If God mounts, he, like a temperate and skillful rider, guides it calmly, urges it when too slow, reins it in when too fast, curbs its forwardness and over-action, checks its bad temper, and keeps it on the proper course; but if the devil has seized the saddle, like an ignorant and rash rider, he hurries it over broken ground, drives it into ditches, dashes it over precipices, spurs it into obstinacy or fury."

With this simile, since a better does not occur, we shall for the present be contented. When it is said, then, that the will of the natural man is subject to the power of the devil, and is actuated by him, the meaning is not that the wills while reluctant and resisting, is forced to submit, (as masters oblige unwilling slaves to execute their orders) but that, fascinated by the impostures of Satan, it necessarily yields to his guidance, and does him homage...

Calvin's Institutes, Book 2, chapter 4, section 1