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hath made, and hateth nothing that he hath created.

But sin is evil; God cannot delight therein : he cannot look upon it; it is that which his soul hateth, the abominable and acursed thing which is most offensive to him:

Therefore, sin was not brought into being by God neither is he the author of it, either morally or physically.

5. Men ought to love and delight in all that God produceth;

But they are forbidden to delight in sin; yea, they are commanded to hate it:

Therefore, sin is not one of the divine productions.

6. Men shall be commended and rewarded for doing the will of God from the heart;

But God will never commend them for sinning, but contrariwise, will punish them in proportion to their crimes :

Which plainly shews, that sinning is not per forming the will of God.

7. If God can decree or bring forth sin, the following absurdities will follow: viz.

Love can produce or bring forth enmity; justice, injustice; holiness can bring forth unholiness; truth can beget falshood; light,darkness; and goodness may be the parent of evil. Purity may generate impurity; and perfection may cause imperfection, &c. These and a thousand absurdities, will follow the supposition that God is the creator of sin. These absurdities are as great, as for a fountain to send forth salt water and fresh at the same time.

But some will say, that unless God produceth all evil as well as all good, he cannot be infinitely as well as absolutely perfect.

To this I answer, that this is just as absurd as it would be to say, that the sun in the firmament would have a perfection greater, upon the supposition that it could emit cold and darkness, than it now has when it can send forth nothing but light and heat. Whereas all reasonable men will allow, that the highest possible perfection we can suppose in the sun, is the impossibility of its emiting any thing but light and heat: and that it would be a great imperfection in the sun,. if it were possble for it to send forth darkness or cold..

Thus, "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all: all good proceeds from him, but no evil: "God cannot be tempted with evil ; neither tempteth he any man. Every good gift, and every perfect gift, is from above, and cometh down from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning." James i. 13, 17.

The highest perfection of God, consists in the absolute impossibility of evil, or sin, proceeding from him but if he is the cause or author, and especially the creator of sin, there is far more than the shadow of a turning in him: there is, in that case, variableness, indeed, in Him who is call unchangeable; which is blasphemy to suppose.

But when I have reasoned thus with some, they have brought these words of Scripture; "Shall there be evil in the city, and the Lord. Ff2

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hath not done it ?"

Amos iii. 6. To which I answer, Non malum peccatum, sed malu pœna: Not the evil of sin, but the evil of punish

ment.

I am told this is a sophistical distinction of the schoolmen. Possibly it may be theirs ; I have never read any of their works: but this distinction is founded in the nature of things, in my opinion: for war, famine, pestilence, earthquakes, fire, &c. &c. are punishments in flicted on the account of sin; and the more these are proved to be inflicted by the hand of God, the more evident it is that he is not the author, creator, or cause of sin; for then how should God be just in punishing men for sin,if he will ed them to sin! Who can answer this?

I have, in my time, conversed with two sorts of people that believe God to be the author of what I call sin, that are consistent with themselves. One party declare that God brought sin and misery into the world for his own glory, and the greatest possible advantage to the universe at large; and that the same reasons which first induced him to cause the existence of sin, and its consequences, guilt, fear, pain, sorrow, &c, will also cause him to continue them in be ing while he exists.

A divine of this class has asserted, that "If the fire of hell should ever go out, the light of hea ven would no longer shine; and that every degree of misery that the damned in hell endure, increases the happiness of the saints in heaven, millions of millions of degrees."

The other party suppose, that, properly, there is no sin in the world; that as all things come to pass by the will of God, and his immediate influence upon his creatures, he is as well pleas ed with the murderer, adulterer, thief, blasphemer, liar, profane swearer, athiest, &c. as with the most upright moral man in the world, or what I should call the best Christian. They deny that men are moral agents at all, and consequently deny God's right to punish any of his creatures for any thing they do.

I was once riding with a man of these absurd sentiments, and I asked him, whether the two cotemporaries, Nero and Paul, equally did the will of God, and were alike acceptable to their Creator, and both equally happy at the moment of their death? He answered without hesitation, Yes.

I then asked him, whether if he should kill me, and then commit suicide, or self-marder, we should be both immediaely happy? He said, Yes. I then told him plainly, that if I had not a better opinion of his disposition than I had of his sentiments, I should not like to ride the road with him.

But some will say, From whence did sin pro ceed? I answer, It is impossible it should come from God. But can you tell from whence, or by what means, it came into existence? If you cannot, says one, I will insist upon it, that it owes its existence to God, and proceeded from him. That would be an unfair conclusion; for I may not be able, with certainty, to tell from whence a thing came, and yet may be able in

fallibly to point out some places from which it did not, and could not come.

As for instance, I may be sailing over the ocean, and see a mountain of ice, and one may ask me, from whence came this mountain of ice? I may answer, I do not know. But suppose he should say, This mountain of ice fell from the sun; I might be able to contradict him, and declare with as much certainty that it did not drop from the sun, as though I could tell exactly from whence it came. For I might reasonably argue,. that the fountain of light and heat could never produce a mountain of ice, for this plain reason, that heat cannot be the parent of cold. The same reasoning will apply to the present. Though I may not be able to say how sin came into the universe, yet I have clearly proved that God is not the author of it; and having vindicated his character, I am the less concerned to say from whence sin came. If it did not arise from the free agency, natural, peccability, or mutability of rational intelligences, and the possibility of it was not implied in their state of trial and probation; then I confess I know not how it entered the universe. But as I am well satisfied that it entered at the door of the free agency of intelligences, combined with their natural mutability; and the possibility of it could not have been prevented, without destroying that beautiful order which God appointed and as I know most infallibly that God could not be the author of it: Ishall: concern myself no farther how it came.

E. W..

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