Of the Cause of Sin.

Sin properly is nothing formally subsisting or existing (for then God should be the author of it) but it is an ataxy or absence of goodness and uprightness in the thing that subsists, Psalm 5:4; John 2:16; 1 John 1:5; Habakkuk 1:13; Job 34:10.

The Manichees think that God can be no means be said to will sin, therefore they held two principles, summum bonum, from which all good things, and summum malum, from which all both sins and punishments. They thought it absurd and impossible for any evil to proceed from the chief good. But there can not be a summum malum, as there is a summum bonum, because evil in its own nature is nothing else but a privatio boni, sin a privation of justice and rectitude and an aberration from the Law, and every privation must necessarily be in some subject.

The Church of Rome slanders the Protestants, and says, that they maintain God to be the cause of sin, but we hold that the Devil and man’s corrupt will are the cause of it. Sin in man at first came from Satan, John 3:8 and 8:44; John 6:17; Matthew 16:23, the cause of sin now man is fallen, is from ourselves, Matthew 15:19.

God has no hand in the acting and approving of sin, Romans 3:5, 6, & 9:14. He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity with approbation; He is the wise permitted, powerful disposer, and eternal avenger of it.

God cannot sin, or cause others to sin:

1. Because as he is subject to no Law which he can transgress, so his will is most holy and pure, and the rule of perfection, Isaiah 6. He is holy in his Nature, Actions, he has so confirmed his Angels in holiness that they cannot sin, 1 John 1:4.
2. To sin is to turn away from the chief and last end, therefore he cannot sin: The Scriptures always attribute it to the Devil and man, Romans 9:14.
3. God threatens sinners in his Word, and punishes them, therefore he allows it not.
4. All deservedly hate the Libertines, who would make that sacred and dreadful Majesty the cause of their detestable enormities, Quicquid ego & tu facimus Deus efficit, nam in nobis est. Calv. Advers. Libert. cap 12. Therefore Bellamine does wickedly in imputing to Protestant Divines that which they detest with the greatest loathing.

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In the Scriptures reprobate, and to reprobate are referred rather to the present conditions of wicked men, than God’s eternal ordination concerning them. But the Decree of Reprobation is expressed in such terms as these, “God is said “not to have given them Christ,” “not to show mercy on some,” “not to have written the name of some in the Book of Life.”

Reprobation is the purpose of God to leave the rest of men to themselves, that he may glorify his Justice in their eternal destruction. Est decretum aliquod quo destinavit alicui Deus damnationem. Twiss. See Mr Manton on the 4th verse of the Epistle of Jude.

The Schoolmen ad others distinguish between Negative and Positive, or affirmative act of Reprobation. The Negative Act is called Preterition, non-election, or a will of not giving life. The positive or Affirmative Act is called Predamnation, or a will of damning the reprobate person. So there are two parts of Election, viz. The Decree of giving grace, by which men are freed from sin by Faith and Repentance: 2. Of rewarding their Faith and Repentance with eternal life.

Preterition or negative Reprobation is an eternal Decree of God purposing within himself to deny unto the non-elect that peculiar love of his, wherewith Election is accompanied, as also that special grace which infallibly brings to glory: of which negations, permissions of sin, obduration in sin, and damnation for sin, are direct consequents. Dr Arrowsmith’s Chain of Principles, Aphor. 5. Exercit. 2.

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Polanus:

Thus far touching election: now it follows concerning reprobation.

Eternal reprobation, is predestination, by which God has shut out from his heavenly kingdom, such as were appointed to eternal destruction.

And it is both of the devil himself, and also of the members of the devil.

The reprobation of the devil is that, by which God from eternity has rejected the devil (who was to become the prince and head, of defection and falling from God) and adjudged him to eternal pains.

The reprobation of the members of the devil is of them, that cleave unto the devil as unto their prince and head.

And that is both of evil angels, and also of men that shall be damned.

The reprobation of evil angels is that, by which God from eternity has purposed not to confirm in good certain angels, destinated to eternal destruction, but to forsake them, and to suffer them to fall through pride, and having cast them out of heaven to exclude them from the fruition of eternal blessedness.

The reprobation of damned men is that, by which God from eternity purposed to pass by them & to leave them in that common destruction, in which all through sin, should headlong throw themselves, Jer. 6:30; Mal. 1:3; Rom. 9:13, 22; 2 Pet. 2.4. Jude’s epist. vers. 4; Revel. 13:8, and 17:8, and 20:15.

Amandus Polanus, The Substance of Christian Religion, (London: Arn. Hatfield for Felix Norton, dwelling in Paules Chuchyard, at the sign of the Parrot, 1600), 51-52.

[The following extract from Amyraut should be read in the light of Twisse’s own discourse on conditional predestination which in turn was based on Bucer’s use of this idea.]

Amyraut:

From what we have deduced above, it is easy to gather that one must carefully distinguish predestination to salvation from predestination to faith, which is the means and the condition by the fulfillment of which we attain it, to the effect that while the one is absolute, as it is said, and does not depend upon any condition, the other can only take place with respect to its effect under the presupposition of this preliminary condition. This is not ordinarily done, however, so that this term ‘predestination’ is taken, as it is commonly held among those who are well instructed in the word of God and who do not wish to defer too much to the will of man, a s simply referring to salvation as being an inevitable outcome, as if it was an absolute decree and did not depend upon any condition. And so indeed the Apostle St. Paul takes this term in this signification when he says that those ‘whom God has foreknown, he has predestined them to be conformed to the image of his Son.’ ( Rom 8: 28) Now salvation and the image of Christ as we have shown above are one and the same thing. And it is clear that the Apostle speaks in this place, not of all men equally and in general but of those whom God ‘has foreknown,’ that is foreseen in the fullness of his mercy and separated from the others fort his inestimable prerogative of faith. But the reason for this is that predestination to salvation being conditional and regarding the whole human race equally and the human race being equally corrupted by sin and incapable of accomplishing the condition upon which salvation depends, it happens necessarily, not by any fault of predestination itself but through the hardness of the heart and the stubbornness of the human spirit, that this first predestination is frustrated for those who have no part in the second. The term ‘predestination’ therefore having I know not what emphasis and seemingly properly reserved for counsels which come to effect rather than for those in which unbelief and the absence of some condition prevent their fulfillment, the Holy Scripture on the one hand does not customarily call ‘predestined’ those who not having been elect & to faith render this other predestination useless with respect to themselves, and on the other speaks of those who are elected to faith as if they have been absolutely predestined to salvation because of the indubitable fulfillment of the preliminary condition. And thus it mixes, as if there was only a single counsel with respect t o them, the conditional predestination to salvation with the absolute election to faith, since in what concerns them, although the one is conditional, it is nevertheless also as certain as if it were absolute because of the infallible and absolute certainty of the fulfillment, of the other on which it depends. And it is forth is very reason that the same Scripture which teaches us so eloquently that Christ died universally for all the world, speaks sometimes in such manner that it seems to approach saying that he died for the small number elected to faith only, as if he had suffered only for those who feel the fruit of his death and not for those whose own unbelief renders this death frustrated. But because it is necessary to diligently distinguish between those ways of speaking which are born in consideration of the outcomes alone and those arising from consideration of the counsels themselves, and because we are here treating the counsels of Cod in all their mystery, it is necessary for us to be on guard against confounding the predestination to salvation, which depends upon the condition which God requires absolutely of all, with the election to faith, according to which God has ordained to himself fulfill this condition in only certain ones.

Moyse Amyraut, Brief Treatise on Predestination and its Dependent Principles, trans., by Richard Lum Richard. Th.D. diss, 1986,  81-82.