1. All the good and happiness in the universe of created beings are the fruit of Sovereignty and Decree.
2. All the moral evil and misery in the universe are the offspring of liberty, a natural good, terminating or acting upon, or united to passive power, a natural evil not counteracted by sovereignly gracious acts on the disposition, or the seat of the moral principle, which may be called analogically the heart.
3. As every act and degree of liberty is perfectly fore-known to God, as the effect of his own decree, and every hypothetical tendency of passive power, though itself not an object of decree, is equally fore-known, it follows, that every sin is as accurately fore-known as if decreed, and has an equally infallible ground of certain futurition.
[239]. It is allowed that there is a difference between the cause of sin, as a principle, and being a sinner; but when applied to an agent, to be the author or the cause of sin, and to be a sinner, is the same thing. Therefore, when applied to God, in no proper sense whatever can it be said that he is the author of sin.—“If by the author of sin is meant (says President Edwards) the permitter, or a not hinderer of sin, and at the same time a disposer of the state of events in such a manner, for wise, holy, and most excellent ends and purposes, that sin infallibly follows: I say, if this be all that is meant by the author of sin, I do not deny that God is the author of sin, though I dislike and reject the phrase, as that which by use and custom is apt to carry another sense.” Edwards on the Will, Part iv. Sect. xi.
But though this acute and excellent writer disavows the use of the phrase, he no where assigns the true ground why it should not be used. The truth is, he does not seem to have been aware of any alternative between the certain futurition of sin and its being decreed. And his only method of warding off the most ruinous consequences appears to have been adopted for want of a better, and not from the satisfactory nature of that method. His view, in brief, is this: God is a being of infinite goodness and wisdom; he can will nothing but good; the system he hath adopted is the best; now, says he, “if the will be good, and the object of his will be, all things considered, good and best, then the choosing and willing it, is not willing evil. And if so, then his ordering according to that will is not doing evil.”
It is very seldom that this eminent author fails in his reasoning; but here certainly he does fail. The phrases willing evil, and doing evil, are not used in the same sense in both parts of the premises, from whence the conclusion is inferred. A system, all things considered, being best, is no good reason why each individual part of it is good. And it may be forcibly retorted; a system which includes an infinite evil as a part of its institution cannot be from God. Nor can it be said that this is arguing against fact, without begging the question, that God has appointed the evil which is blended with the good.—On the subject itself let the following things be considered:
1. If choosing and willing a system in which sin is a decreed part is not willing evil, because the system is good and best, all things considered then it would inevitably follow, that sin, because such a part of that system is not an evil. But, it may be said, It is willing it for a good end. Does then a good end or intention destroy the nature of sin? Was the sin of Paul or any other saint anihilated because he sincerely aimed at the Glory of God? Or has any design, however comprehensive, exalted or sincere, the least tendency to alter the nature of sin?
2. Allowing as incontrovertible that the present system of things is the best, all things considered, and that sin is actually blended with it, it does not thence follow that the sin itself is decreed, or is any part of divine appointment. For not to hinder sin, is extremely different from being the cause or author of it. The one is perfectly consistent with equity, the other would be an act of injustice.
3. It is a sentiment so repugnant to all analogical propriety, to do evil that good may come, that it cannot be supposed a man of Mr. Edwards’ piety would have adopted any thing like it, but from what appeared to him an inevitable necessity. And indeed whoever assumes the principle, that every event comes to pass from decretive necessity, sin not excepted, must of course be driven to his conclusion. But this valuable author had no need to recur to that opinion, in order to establish his theory of hypothetical necessity; for this will stand on a rock, immoveably, without such aid.
4. In reality, the certain futurition of good, and that of evil, arises from different, yea from diametrically opposite causes. The one flows from the operative will of God, and is fore-known to be future because decreed, the other flows from a deficient or privative cause, passive power, when united to liberty, as before explained, which exists only in created beings, and in all these, as a contrast to self-existence, independence, and all-sufficiency. Yet this is the subject of hypothetical tendencies and results no less than the good to which it stands opposed, in all the boundless varieties of its blendings; therefore no case can be so complicated, but to infinite prescience the event must appear with equal certainty as if decreed.