(_c_) “T. H. demands how God should be the cause of the action and yet not be the cause of the irregularity of the action. I answer, because he concurs to the doing of evil by a general, but not by a special influence. As the earth gives nourishment to all kinds of plants, as well to hemlock as to wheat; but the reason why the one yields food to our sustenance, the other poison to our destruction, is not from the general nourishment of the earth, but from the special quality of the root. Even so the general power to act is from God. _In him we live, and move, and have our being._ This is good. But the specification, and determination of this general power to the doing of any evil, is from ourselves, and proceeds from the free-will of man. This is bad. And to speak properly, the free-will of man is not the efficient cause of sin, as the root of the hemlock is of poison, sin having no true entity or being in it, as poison hath; but rather the deficient cause. Now no defect can flow from him who is the highest perfection. (_d_) Wherefore T. H. is mightily mistaken, to make the particular and determinate act of killing Uriah to be from God. The general power to act is from God, but the specification of this general and good power to murder, or to any particular evil, is not from God, but from the free-will of man. So T. H. may see clearly if he will, how one may be the cause of the law, and likewise of the action in some sort, that is, by general influence; and yet another cause concurring, by special influence and determining this general and good power, may make itself the true cause of the anomy or the irregularity. And therefore he may keep his longer and shorter garments for some other occasion. Certainly, they will not fit this subject, unless he could make general and special influence to be all one. “But T. H. presseth yet further, that the case is the same, and the objection used by the Jews, (verse 19): _Why doth he yet find fault; who hath resisted his will?_ is the very same with my argument; and St. Paul’s answer, (verse 20:) _O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say unto him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over his clay?_ &c., is the very same with his answer in this place, drawn from the irresistible power and absolute dominion of God, which justifieth all his actions. And that the apostle in his answer doth not deny that it was God’s will, nor that God’s decree was before Esau’s sin.