5. And first in respect of the person permitting (he saith) it is necessary that he know, what, to whom, and the ability of performance, that is to be granted, or used, by the person permitted, and that the person permitting have power to permit and to impede, and also that he have the right and authority of permitting. 2. In the person permitted, it is necessarily requisite, that he have sufficient power to effect and perform the thing permitted, if not hindered; for otherwise it would be nonsense to say, that a person is permitted to do an act that he hath no power to perform. 3. If the person permitted have sufficiency of power to perform the act permitted, yet there is also required a propension and disposition in the person permitted, to perform the thing permitted, otherwise the permission as to that act would be without a certain end, and so would be in vagum, inconstant and not to be performed, and therefore he concludeth thus: Imò nec rectè dici potest quod alicui actus permittatur, qui actus illos præstandi affectu nullo tenetur.
De permiss. p. 342.
Eccles. 7. 29.
6. We shall omit the exceptions that the learned and subtile Dr. Twisse hath made against diverse particulars in these passages, and shall only fix upon one that is manifestly false (if he mean of permission in general which he confesseth.) For in the Angels and Adam before their falling and committing of sin, there was not any propension or disposition to sin, and therefore to this we shall give the most acute answer of Dr. Twisse in these words: Nam licèt insit homini propensio ad peccandum (scilicet post lapsum) per modum dispositionis, quæ præcedanea sit permissioni actus peccaminosi; At in Adamo (ante lapsum) nulla inerat hujusmodi dispositio, aut ad peccandum propensio, ante peccatum ejus primum. Sed neq; in Angelis, qui à statu suo ceciderunt. Secundo, ut ut dispositio, sive habitus insit qui inclinet ad agendum, non est ex natura dispositionis sive habitus cujuscunq; ut faciat hominem propendere ad actum aliquem particularem, cujus vel solius ratione dicitur permissio. And though it be granted that God did create the Angels, and Adam in statu labili, wherein they had a sufficiency of power or grace not to have sinned, or faln, and though that power or grace was not withdrawn from them, and that there was no coaction upon their wills to inforce them to sin; for if it had been so, their falls would have been no sin: so neither did God supply them with more assisting grace to have upholden them, for then their estate had not been labile, nor they in a possibility to sin. But it is manifest that they in their Creation were set in æquilibrio, and had equal power of freedom of will either to sin or not to sin, and so had no propension or disposition at all to commit that sin, to which they were left by a free permission: and so propension and disposition to the act permitted (if permission be understood generally) had no place in the Angels nor Adam before their first sinning, according to the Text, God made man upright, that is like a straight or right line that falling perpendicularly upon another right line, doth incline to neither end of the line upon which it falls, so Adam was made upright without any propension or inclination to sin at all. And if this propension and disposition be understood, and applied to Angels in their condition after their fall, then it is true they have not only an inclination but a most strong will and desire to commit more evil and mischief than God in his goodness permits them to perform, for the Devil goeth about like a roaring Lion seeking whom he may devour, and it was Satan that not only had a disposition, but desired to sift Peter as wheat. And it is manifest that wicked Men have a strong will and desire to commit mischief; but that God hath an hook in their Nostrils, and a Bridle in their Jawes wherewith he curbs and restrains them, that they cannot act out all the mischief that they intend, as is manifest in the example of Sennacherib and many others.
Twisse de Permiss. ut supra.
Fran. Jun. de peccat. prim. Adam. p. 111, 114.
August. Enchir. 75, 76.
7. Permission must be referred and reduced to the will of God, for nolition is an act of his will as well as volition: and to speak properly and truly, permission is but an act of the Divine Will not to impede such or such particular actions of the creatures; and therefore the same things will follow from his volition or his will non impediendi, as from his volition to the acts of a free agent, seeing neither do put coaction upon the will of the Creature that is to act. And that permission is an act of the Divine will, and to be reduced unto it Arminius confesseth in these words: Permissionem ad genus actionis pertinere ex ipsa vocis flexione est notum, sive per se sive reductive, ut in Scholis loquuntur. Cessatio enim ab actu, ad actum quoq; est reducenda: causam autem proximam & immediatam habet voluntatem, non scientiam, non potentiam, non potestatem, licet & ista in permittente requirantur. And when he defineth permission, he saith: Permissio Dei, est actus voluntatis Divinæ; than which nothing can be more clear. And not much different from this is the definition of permission, that is given by learned Junius thus: Est autem permissio actus voluntatis, quo is penes quem est alienas actiones inhibere, eas non inhibet, sed agentis voluntati permittit earum modum. And again he saith: Apud Deum verò Opt. Max. nulla est omnino permissio, nisi voluntaria: quandoquidem omnis divina permissio à principio interno est, id est, à voluntate ipsius, & movetur ad finem quem voluntas præfinivit ejus. But we will conclude this with that of S. Augustin thus Englished: “Not any thing cometh to pass, unless the Omnipotent will have it to be done, either that it may be done by his suffering, or by his Volition. Neither is it to be doubted that God doth well, even by suffering those things to be done, that are done evilly; For he doth not permit but by a just judgment, and verily every thing is good that is just. Although therefore those things that are evil, in as much as they are evil, they are not good; notwithstanding, as they are not only good, but also as they are evil, it is good. For unless this were good that there should be evils, they would by no means be permitted of the omnipotent good, to whom without all doubt it is always as easy to do that which he would, as it is easy not to suffer that which he would not have to be.” By all which it is plain that his permission is the act of his Divine Will, and if he would not have it done he would not permit it, and so the same consequences will follow from Nolition, that follow from Volition, in respect as they are both acts of the Divine Will.
Twisse ut supra. 346.
Prov. 16. 4.