The ecclesiastical struggle between the Nonconforming Puritans and the Church, then, was fundamentally administrative. It came down to the question whether a powerful organization, which thoroughly believed in itself and its own importance, as all powerful organizations and vested interests come to do, should allow itself to be turned out of control by a small minority, whose attitude it considered detrimental, not only to itself, but to religion and the State. There could be only one answer. Had it not been for the survival of the mediæval idea as to the necessity of belonging to the Church, it is possible that those Puritans who were actuated purely by spiritual motives would have followed the more consistent Separatists, and merely have withdrawn from the body with whose government and usage they were no longer in accord. In that case, the way would have been cleared for the great moral influence which the Puritans exerted, without the embittering results of the struggle, and the reaction of 1660 against Puritanism as it showed itself when in political power. On the other hand, political liberty might have been the loser. In theological dogma, the Puritans had, at least until the later period, but little quarrel with the Church. Both were largely under the influence of Calvinistic doctrine, although there was considerable latitude of belief among individuals of both parties. The central pivot of their creed was the absolutely unconditioned will of God.[177] The system, which is strongly tinged with legal doctrine, acknowledges no law but that of his untrammeled will. From this flow two consequences. One is that there is no room for a non-moral sphere of activity, for actions which, belonging merely to the domain of nature, are untinged by moral obligation. The other is the doctrine of predestination, by some considered the central point of the Calvinistic theology. “God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and the ruin of his posterity in him,” wrote Calvin, “but also arranged all by the determination of his own will.”[178] The decree involved both election and reprobation. Except for this decree, all human beings, including those to whom the gospel had never been preached, and the baby who died at his first breath, were condemned to hell forever. God, however, chose certain individuals as his elect to be saved, foreordained from all eternity by “his gratuitous mercy, totally irrespective of human merit.” The rest He condemned eternally, by “a just and irreprehensible but incomprehensible judgment.”[179] Footnote 177: W. Walker, _John Calvin_ (New York, 1906), pp. 409-29; _cf._ also P. Schaff, _Creeds of Christendom_ (New York, 1877), vol. I, pp. 451 _ff._ Footnote 178: John Calvin, _Institutes of the Christian Religion_, translated by J. Allen (Philadelphia, 1844), vol. II, p. 170. Footnote 179: Calvin, _Institutes_, vol. I, p. 149.