an one is a thief, there is the fact; therefore he ought to be punished, there is the right. But this opinion of T. H. grounds the right to be punished, neither upon law, nor upon fact, but upon the irresistible power of God. Yea, it overturneth, as much as in it lies, all law; first, the eternal law, which is the ordination of divine wisdom, by which all creatures are directed to that end which is convenient for them, that is, not to necessitate them to eternal flames; then the law participated, which is the ordination of right reason, instituted for the common good, to show unto man what he ought to do, and what he ought not to do. To what purpose is it, to show the right way to him who is drawn and haled a contrary way by adamantine bonds of inevitable necessity? (_g_) “Lastly, howsoever T. H. cries out, that God cannot sin, yet in truth he makes him to be the principal and most proper cause of all sin. For he makes him to be the cause, not only of the law and of the action, but even of the irregularity itself, and the difference between the action and the law, wherein the very essence of sin doth consist. He makes God to determine David’s will, and necessitate him to kill Uriah. In causes physically and essentially subordinate, the cause of the cause is evermore the cause of the effect. These are those deadly fruits which spring from the poisonous root of the absolute necessity of all things; which T. H. seeing, and that neither the sins of Esau, nor Pharaoh, nor any wicked person do proceed from the operative, but from the permissive will of God, and that punishment is an act of justice, not of dominion only, I hope that according to his promise he will change his opinion. ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE BISHOP’S REPLY NO. XII.