If it be objected that God’s permission of moral evil in the universe is really the cause of this evil, and makes God Himself responsible for sin and its consequences, a satisfactory answer is not far to seek. It is absolutely incompatible with God’s Infinite Sanctity that He be responsible for sin and its consequences. For these the free will of the creature is _alone_ responsible. The creation of intelligent beings, endowed with the power _freely_ to love, honour and serve God, is the most marvellous of all God’s works. Free will is the noblest endowment of a creature of God, as it is also the most mysterious. Man, who by his intelligence has the power to know God as his Supreme Good, has by his will the power _freely_ to tend towards God and attain to the possession of God as his Last End. In so far as man sins, _i.e._ knowingly, deliberately, and freely violates the tendency of his nature towards God by turning away from Him, he and he alone is responsible for the consequences, because he has the power to accomplish what he knows to be God’s design in his regard, and to be his true destiny and path to happiness—_viz._ that he tend towards union with God and the possession of God—and he deliberately fails to make use of this power. Such failure and its consequences are, therefore, his own; they leave absolutely untouched and unassailed the Infinite Goodness and Benevolence of God’s eternal design in his regard. In scholastic form, the objection is proposed and answered in this way: “The cause of a cause is the cause of the latter’s effects; but God is the cause of man, and sin is the latter’s effect; therefore God is the cause of sin”. “That the cause of a _non-free_ cause is the cause of the latter’s effects, we admit. That the cause of a _free_ cause is the cause of the latter’s effects, at least in the sense of permitting, without intending and being thereby responsible for them, we also admit; always in the sense of intending and being responsible for them, we deny. The _positive effects_ of a created free cause, those which the latter by nature is intended to produce, are attributable to the first cause or creator of the free cause, and the first cause is responsible for them. The _failures_ of the created free cause to produce its natural and intended effects, are not due to the first cause; they are not intended by, nor attributable to, the first cause; nor is the latter responsible for them: they are failures of the free cause, and of him alone; though they are of course foreseen and permitted by the first cause or creator of the latter. The minor premiss of the objection we may admit—noting, however, that sin is not properly called an effect, but rather, like all evil, a _failure_ of some cause to produce its connatural effect: it is a defect, a deficiency, a privation of some effect, of some positive perfection, which the cause ought naturally to have produced. The