fession of Faith_ says: "God, from all eternity, did, by the
most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably
ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so as thereby neither is God
the author of sin." We pay all respect to this as a disclaimer. Our
Presbyterian brethren do not intend to charge God with being the
author of sin. But we are compelled to regard these propositions
as directly contradictory to each other. Is not a being the author
of that which he originally designs and decrees, and subsequently
brings into existence? and is it not maintained that he decreed
from all eternity, and brings to pass whatever occurs? Either sin
has not come to pass, or God is the author of it. It is useless
to say that God has brought to pass the act, but not the sinfulness.
The sinfulness has come to pass. It is useless to say that sin is
man's, and not God's act. Man does nothing but what God has decreed,
and, in some infallible way leads him to do. "God's power," says Dr.
Chalmers, "gives birth to _every purpose_; it gives impulse to
_every desire_, gives shape and color to _every conception_." Says
Fisher, in his _Catechism_: "God not only efficaciously concurs in
producing the action as to the matter of it, but likewise predetermines
the creature to such or such an action, and not to another, shutting
up all other ways of acting, and leaving only that open which he
had determined to be done." We might, with vastly more plausibility,
deny that Paul was the author of his Epistles, because he employed an
amanuensis, or, for the same reason, deny that Milton was the author
of _Paradise Lost_. It is useless here to speculate upon the reasons
which induced God to ordain and bring sin to pass. We are now concerned
with the fact merely, and we hence conclude that he is the author of
sin and the only being properly answerable for it.

5. If the advocates of this doctrine should still insist that it
does not make God the author of sin; that man is a free agent,
and properly responsible for his actions, notwithstanding they
are foreordained; I press them with this plain consequence--God
is, to say the least, a participant in the sinning. And he is not
merely a _coadjutor_, but the _principal_--the principal in
_every instance of sinning_. He originates the first conception
of the sinning act. He forms the plan. He arranges all the
circumstances. He, by his providence, applies the influence by
which the result is effectuat