ot cause, he does not tolerate sin, on
account of its happy effects, or on account of the uses to which it may be
turned. The only word he has for such a thing is _woe_; and the only
attitude he bears toward it is one of eternal and inexorable vengeance.
All the schemes of men make light of sin; but God is in earnest,
infinitely and immutably in earnest, in the purpose to root out and
destroy the odious thing, that it may have no place amid the glory of his
dominions.

As sin did not originate by his permission, so it does not continue by his
sufferance. He permits it, indeed, in that he permits the existence of
beings capable of sinning; and he permits the existence of such beings in
the very act of permitting the existence of those who are capable of
knowing, and loving, and serving him. An infinitely good Being, says M.
Bayle, would not have conferred on his creature the fatal power to do
evil. But he did not reflect that a power to do good is, _ex necessitate
rei_, a power to do evil. Surely, a good Being would bestow on his
creature the power to do good--the power to become like himself, and to
partake of the incommunicable blessedness of a holy will. But if he would
bestow this, he would certainly confer power to do evil; for the one is
identical with the other. And sin has arisen, not from any power conferred
for that purpose, but from that which constitutes the brightest element in
the sublime structure and glory of the moral world. It arises, not from
any imperfection in the work of God, but from that without which it would
have been infinitely less than perfect.

"All divines admit," says Bayle, "that God can infallibly produce a good
act of the will in a human soul without depriving it of the use of
liberty."(228) This is no longer admitted. We call it in question. We deny
that such an act can be produced, either with or without depriving the
soul of liberty. We deny that it can be produced at all: for whatever God
may produce in the human soul, this is not, this cannot be, the moral
goodness or virtue of the soul in which it is produced. In other words, it
is not, and it cannot be, an object of praise or of moral approbation in
him in whom it is thus caused to exist. His virtue or moral goodness can
exist only by reason, and in case of an exercise of his own will. It can
no more be the effect of an extraneous force than two and two can be made
equal to five.

In conclusion, the plain truth is, that the act