say, God sees, looks on, and does nothing, nor ever did anything, in the business. Thus you see how the Bishop expoundeth St. Paul. Therefore I will leave the rest of his commentary upon Rom. ix. to the judgment of the reader, to think of the same as he pleaseth. (_b_) “Yet I do acknowledge that which T. H. saith, ‘that he who doth permit anything to be done, which it is in his power to hinder, knowing that if he do not hinder it, it will be done, doth in some sort will it;’ I say in some sort, that is either by an antecedent will, or by a consequent will; either by an operative will, or by a permissive will; or he is willing to let it be done, but not willing to do it.” Whether it be called antecedent, or consequent, or operative, or permissive, it is enough for the necessity of the thing that the heart of Pharaoh should be hardened; and if God were not willing to do it, I cannot conceive how it could be done without him. (_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.” I had thought to pass over this place, because of the nonsense of general and special influence. Seeing he saith that God concurs to the doing of evil, I desire the reader would take notice, that if he blame me for speaking of God as of a necessitating cause, and as it were a principal agent in the causing of all actions, he may with as good reason blame himself for making him by concurrence an accessory to the same. And indeed, let men hold what they will contrary to the truth, if they write much, the truth will fall into their pens. But he thinks he hath a similitude, which will make this permissive will a very clear business. “The earth,” saith he, “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.” It seemeth by this similitude, he thinketh, that God doth, not operatively, but permissively will that the root of hemlock should poison the man that eateth it, but that wheat should nourish him he willeth operatively; which is very absurd; or else he must confess that the venomous effects of wicked men are willed operatively. (_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.”