The Bishop had argued in this manner: “If there be no liberty, there shall be no last judgment, no rewards nor punishments after death.” To this I answered, that though God cannot sin, because what he doth, his doing maketh just, and because he is not subject to another’s law, and that therefore it is blasphemy to say that God can sin; yet to say, that God hath so ordered the world that sin may be necessarily committed, is not blasphemy. And I can also further say, though God be the cause of all motion and of all actions, and therefore unless sin be no motion nor action, it must derive a necessity from the first mover; nevertheless it cannot be said that God is the author of sin, because not he that necessitateth an action, but he that doth command and warrant it, is the author. And if God own an action, though otherwise it were a sin, it is now no sin. The act of the Israelites in robbing the Egyptians of their jewels, without God’s warrant had been theft. But it was neither theft, cozenage, nor sin; supposing they knew the warrant was from God. The rest of my answer to that inconvenience, was an opposing to his inconveniences the manifest texts of St. Paul, Rom. ix. The substance of his reply to my answer is this. (_a_) “Though punishment were an act of dominion, not of justice, in God; yet this is no sufficient cause why God should deny his own act, or why he should chide or expostulate with men, why they did that which he himself did necessitate them to do.” I never said that God denied his act, but that he may expostulate with men; and this may be (I shall never say directly, it is) the reason of that his expostulation, viz. to convince them that their wills were not independent, but were his mere gift; and that to do, or not to do, is not in him that willeth, but in God that hath mercy on, or hardeneth whom he will. But the Bishop interpreteth _hardening_ to be a permission of God. Which is to attribute to God in such actions no more than he might have attributed to any of Pharaoh’s servants, the not persuading their master to let the people go. And whereas he compares this permission to the indulgence of a parent, that by his patience encourageth his son to become more rebellious, which indulgence is a sin; he maketh God to be like a sinful man. And indeed it seemeth that all they that hold this freedom of the will, conceive of God no otherwise than the common sort of Jews did, that God was like a man, that he had been seen by Moses, and after by the seventy elders (Exod. xxiv. 10); expounding that and other places literally. Again he saith, that God is said to harden the heart _permissively_, but not _operatively_; which is the same distinction with his first, namely _negatively_, not _positively_, and with his second, _occasionally_, and not _causally_. So that all his three ways how God hardens the heart of wicked men, come to this one of _permission_; which is as much as to