An End of Doctrinal Controversies, Chapter 8
CHAP. VIII. Of God's causing or not causing Sin.
§. 1. HOw certainly the Doctrine of the necessity of immediate, efficient, physical, predetermining Premotion, doth make God the principal Cause of all Sin, I have so oft shewed, and so fully proved, that I shall here be very short upon that Subject.
§. 2. To say, that God is the principal determining Cause of every sinful act with all its Objects and Circumstances (called the materiale peccati) and also the Cause of the Law that forbiddeth it, and the Person that committeth it, is to make him the chief Cause of Sin, as far as it is capable of a Cause, even of the formal Cause.
§. 3. To say, That such a Cause is the Cause only of the Act, but not of the Obliquity, is absurd; because the obliquity is a Relation necessarily resulting from the Law and Act with all its modes and circumstances: And the obliquity can have no other Cause.
§. 4. To say, That God willeth and loveth and causeth Sin, not as Sin, but for good ends and uses, is, to say no more for God than may be said for wicked men, if not for Devils; save only that God's Ends are better than theirs.
§. 5. To say, That God willeth not Sin, but the Existence and Futurity of Sin, is but as aforesaid, to say, that He wills not Sin as Sin, or sub ratione …ali, but that it exist for better ends; or else it is a contradiction: For to will or cause Sin is nothing else but to will and cause the existence of Sin.
§. 6. They that say, That God willeth the Existence of Sin, as it is summe conducibile, to the Glory of his Justice and Mercy, (yea, and that per se, and not only per accidens) do wrong the Glory of God's Holiness and Wisdom. A Physician can love his own skill, and compassion, and the honour that cometh to him by curing a Disease, without loving or willing the Disease it self, but only supposing it as an Evil which he can turn to Good.
§. 7. They that say, That God is the Cause indeed of our Sin, but is no Sinner himself, because he is under no Law, say nothing in the latter but what all grant, and nothing in the former but what duplicate page duplicate page God's Church doth commonly abhorr, excepting some few singular presumers.
§. 8. They that hold, That God doth by immediate physical efficient predetermining Premotion principally and unresistibly cause every sinful act, with all its modes and circumstances, do certainly deny all certainty of Faith, and so subvert all Christianity: For the formal Object of all Divine Faith, is God's Veracity, (that God cannot lye) if God could lye, our Belief could have no certainty: Now God speaketh to us, but by inspired men, and not by an essential voice of his own: And if God cause, as aforesaid, all the Lyes that ever were spoken by Men or Devils in the World, then no man can be sure that he doth not so by Prophets and Apostles, or that ever they say true: And God's Veracity then is gone.
§. 9. They that think …o evade this Evidence by the difference of Predetermination and Inspiration, and say God inspireth no Lyes though he predetermine all by physical Premotion, do labour in vain: For, 1. No man can ever prove that any Inspiration doth interest God more in the Act or Lye, than physical Predetermination doth: For how can God be more the Author of any Act than by effectual premoving the Creature to act it, and that by immediate physical Predetermination? What doth Inspiration do, but so move the Mind, Will and Tongue of a Prophet? No man can name more that Man is capable of. 2. But if there were a difference, we are not capable of understanding that difference so well, as to prove that God can cause all the Lyes in the World by predetermining Premotion, and yet can cause none by Inspiration; shall none believe him that know not this difference? 3. And were it intelligible, it would be only to inspired men themselves. So that I am past doubt that we must part with all Certainty of Christianity, and of all Divine Belief, if we receive this Doctrine of Predetermination, because the objectum formals fidei is then gone.
§. 10. They that say, that if we make not God the Predeterminer to every act in specie morali, and in every comparative respect and mode, we shall make Man a God, by making him a Causa prima, do thereby as much conclude God to be the first and principal predetermining efficient Cause of every wicked Habit (as of Malignity, or Hatred of God, &c.) because a Habit hath as much Entity as an Act: Therefore if it deifie Man, to make him the first Cause, e. g. of a Lye or Murder, in specie, then so it will do to make him the first Cause of the Habit.
§. 11. If it be as impossible for Man to do any thing but what he doth, or not to do all that he doth without God's foresaid predetermining Premotion, as it is to be Gods, or to overcome God, or make a World, then if Men are counted Sinners, and condemned, it is for not doing such impossibilities, for not doing what God alone can do, or for not overcoming Almighty premoving Power.
§. 12. …t cannot rationally be expected, that they that believe that God is the chief Cause and Willer of all Sin, should think it very bad, or themselves bad for it; or that when God hath unresistibly made all men to sin, he yet hateth it, and sent his Son into the World to testifie his Hatred by dying for it; and that he is serious in all that he saith against it in his word: nor that such men should hate it, and rather die than sin.
§. 13. Therefore as the Church of God hath ever abhorred to make God the Cause of Sin, and kept up the sence of the Evil of Sin, (for our hatred of it, and departing from it, and our Humiliation) as a necessary part of our Religion, so must we resolutely do still; or else we shall be worse than the Light of Nature teacheth Heathens themselves to be.
§. 14. God hath many waies to cause the Effects of Sin, without causing the Sin it self; as by impediments to other waies, by altering Recipients, Objects, Concauses, and many others, which I have elsewhere enumerated: He can will and procure, that Christ shall die by the sinful malice and action of the Iews, without willing or causing their malice, will or action as bad: As he can procure a man to be in the way where a Murderer cometh with a disposition to murder, and can direct the Bullet, &c.
§. 15. When one and the same word doth signifie both the Sin and the Effect of the Sin, it occasioneth the error of men that cannot distinguish: And so if the Scripture should say, That God is the Cause of it, they think it includeth the Sin with the Effect. So Murder signifieth both the will and action of the Murderer, and the death of the man murdered as the effect: Absolom's Constuprations signifieth both his sinful will and action, and the effect of both: The revolt of the Israelites from Ieroboam; the giving up of Kingdoms to the Beast, and many such-like, in Scripture are ascribed to God as the Cause, not as the words signifie the sinful will and action of the Malefactor, but only the produced effect of both (saving when God's permission only is understood.)
§. 16. They that deride it as absurd, that God should decree, will and cause the Effect, and not the Wills forbidden Act, are too bold with God, in measuring his Counsels and Actions by the rule of their vain Imaginations: Yet many give us, instead of Scripture and Reason, but such a confident derision, and say, [How absurd is it to say that God willed, decreed and caused that Christ should be murdered, and yet willed, decreed or caused not that any should murder him? That God should will and cause David's Concubines to be defiled, and not will or cause that Absolom should defile them? That He should will and cause the Kingdom to be rent from Rehoboam, and yet not cause any one to will or do it? &c.] But is all false that is not agreeable to their imagination? Or is this a convincing way of reasoning? It is not from imperfection but perfection that God doth not will or cause mens Sin: But it is from his perfection that he causeth the effect, as being the Lord and Ruler of the World. Sin is not a capable Object of God's Volition, or an effect which he can cause: But the effect is, God cannot love or cause Iuda… 's will or act (in specie) of betraying Christ, nor the Iews will or act in murdering him: But God can will and cause, that Christ shall be betrayed and killed, by such individual persons as he foreknew were by their wickedness disposed thereunto.
§. 17. All good men have so deep a hatred of Sin, and zeal for God's Holiness, and confess, that Sin is of the Devil, and it is his special character to be the Author of it, that when zeal against an Adversary in Disputation can yet make many put that character on God (yea, as the prime Efficient, which is more than a Tempter) and this as a part of the Honour of his Providence, and think they serve God and his Truth, by bitter reviling the contrary-minded, it is a dreadful instance how far Faction and Contentious Zeal may carry men. And yet when we see how carefully many avoid Sin when they have thus honoured it as God's work, it is a notable instance how far good men may err in notions, and yet practically hold the contrary truth, and what great notional Errors must be pardoned to each other, as they are pardoned of God.
§. 18. God punisheth Sin with Sin, without causing that Sin at all; that is, 1. He justly demeth his Grace to the rejecters of it, and their Sin is the consequent of that Privation, as a drunken man's wandering is to ones denying to lead him: 2. God maketh it a punishment when man hath first made it a Sin. [q. d. If thou wilt commit such a Sin, it shall have this penal nature and effect.] As if in the Law of Nature God decreed, that excess of Drink or Meat should breed Sickness, that taking a sweet Poison should torment you, that Venery should bring the Pox, that Prodigality shall impoverish men, &c. Here Man first maketh it a Sin, and then God maketh it a Punishment: And Sin it self being the deformity and misery of the Soul, hath two relations at once (in time); the first in order of Nature is the sinfulness, caused by Man; and the second the penal relation caused by God; whose Act indeed was antecedent in his Law (of Nature), making Nature such, that it should so suffer if it will so do); and yet the Effect is consequent to mans Act.