Stephen Charnock
The Existence and Attributes of God
Vol. 2, pp. 1097-1108.

Prop. 4. The holiness of God is not blemished by his secret will to suffer sin to enter into the world. God never willed sin by his preceptive will. It was never founded upon, or produced by any word of his, as the creation was. He never said, “Let there be sin under the heaven,” as he said, “Let there be water under the heaven” (Gen. 1:9). Nor doth he will it by infusing any habit of it, or stirring up inclinations to it; no, “God tempts no man” (James 1:13). Nor doth he will it by his approving will; it is detestable to him, nor ever can be otherwise. He cannot approve it either before commission or after.

1. The will of God is in some sort concurrent with sin.

He doth not properly will it, but he wills not to hinder it, to which by his omnipotence he could put a bar. If he did positively will it, it might be wrought by himself, and so could not be evil. If he did in no sort will it, it would not be committed by his creature. Sin entered into the world, either God willing the permission of it, or not willing the permission of it. The latter cannot be said, for then the creature is more powerful than God, and can do that which God will not permit. God can, if he be pleased, banish all sin in a moment out of the world; he could have prevented the revolt of angels, and the fall of man, they did not sin whether he would or no; he might by his grace have stepped in the first moment, and made a special impression upon them of the happiness they already possessed, and the misery they would incur by any wicked attempt. He could as well have prevented the sin of the fallen angels, and confirmed them in grace, as of those that continued in their happy state; he might have appeared to man, informed him of the issue of his design, and made secret impressions upon his heart, since he was acquainted with every avenue to his will. God could have kept all sin out of the world, as well as all creatures from breathing in it; he was as well able to bar sin for ever out of the world as to let creatures lie in the womb of nothing, wherein they were first wrapped.

To say God doth will sin as he doth other things, is to deny his holiness; to say it entered without anything of his will, is to deny his omnipotence. If he did necessitate Adam to fall, what shall we think of his purity? If Adam did fall without any concern of God’s will in it, what shall we say of his sovereignty? The one taints his holiness, and the other clips his power. If it came without anything of his will in it, and he did not foresee it, where is his omniscience? If it entered whether he would or no, where is his omnipotence? “Who hath resisted his will?” (Rom. 9:19). There cannot he a lustful act in Abimelech if God will withhold his power: “I withheld thee” (Gen. 20:6); nor a cursing word in Balaam’s mouth, unless God give power to speak it: “Have I now any power at all to say anything? The word that God puts in my mouth, that shall I speak” (Num. 22:38). As no action could be sinful if God had not forbidden it, so no sin could be committed if God did not will to give way to it.

2. God doth not will sin directly, and by an efficacious will.

He doth not directly will it, because he hath prohibited it by his law, which is a discovery of his will. So that if he should directly will sin, and directly prohibit it, he would will good and evil in the same manner, and there would be contradictions in God’s will. To will sin absolutely is to work it. “God hath done whatsoever he pleased.” (Ps. 115:3). God cannot absolutely will it, because he cannot work it. God wills good by a positive decree, because he hath decreed to effect it. He wills evil by a privative decree, because he hath decreed not to give that grace which would certainly prevent it. God doth not will sin simply, for that were to approve it, but he wills it in order to that good his wisdom will bring forth from it. He wills not sin for itself, but for the event.

To will sin as sin, or as purely evil, is not in the capacity of a creature, neither of man nor devil. The will of a rational creature cannot will anything but under the appearance of good, of some good in the sin itself, or some good in the issue of it. Much more is this from God, who being infinitely good, cannot will evil as evil, and being infinitely knowing, cannot will that for good which is evil. Infinite wisdom can be under no error or mistake. To will sin as sin would be an unanswerable blemish on God, but to will to suffer it in order to good is the glory of his wisdom. It could never have peeped up its head unless there had been some decree of God concerning it. And there had been no decree of God concerning it, had he not intended to bring good and glory out of it. If God did directly will the discovery of his grace and mercy to the world, he did in some sort will sin, as that without which there could not have been any appearance of mercy in the world; for an innocent creature is not the object of mercy, but a miserable creature, and no rational creature but must be sinful before it be miserable.

3. God wills the permission of sin.

He doth not positively will sin, but he positively wills to permit it. And though he doth not approve of sin, yet he approves of that act of his will whereby he permits it. For since that sin could not enter into the world without some concern of God’s will about it, that act of his will that gave way to it could not be displeasing to him. God could never be displeased with his own act: “He is not a man that he should repent” (1 Sam. 15:29). What God cannot repent of, he cannot but approve of; it is contrary to the blessedness of God to disapprove of, and be displeased with, any act of his own will. If he hated any act of his own will, he would hate himself, he would be under a torture; every one that hates his own acts is under some disturbance and torment for them. That which is permitted by him is in itself, and in regard of the evil of it, hateful to him; but as the prospect of that good which he aims at in the permission of it is pleasing to him, so that act of his will whereby he permits it is ushered in by an approving act of his understanding. Either God approved of the permission or not; if he did not approve his own act of permission, he could not have decreed an act of permission. It is unconceivable that God should decree such an act which he detested, and positively will that which he hated.

Though God hated sin, as being against his holiness, yet he did not hate the permission of sin, as being subservient by the immensity of his wisdom to his own glory. He could never be displeased with that which was the result of his eternal counsel, as this decree of permitting sin was, as well as any other decree resolved upon in his own breast. For as God acts nothing in time, but what he decreed from eternity, so he permits nothing in time, but what he decreed from eternity to permit. To speak properly, therefore, God doth not will sin, but he wills the permission of it, and this will to permit is active and positive in God.

4. This act of permission is not a mere and naked permission, but such an one as is attended with a certainty of the event.

The decrees of God to make use of the sin of man for the glory of his grace, in the mission and passion of his Son, hung upon this entrance of sin; would it consist with the wisdom of God to decree such great and stupendous things, the event whereof should depend upon an uncertain foundation, which he might be mistaken in? God would have sat in council from eternity to no purpose, if he had only permitted those things to be done, without any knowledge of the event of this permission; God would not have made such provision for redemption to no purpose, or an uncertain purpose, which would have been if man had not fallen, or if it had been an uncertainty with God whether he would fall or no. Though the will of God about sin was permissive, yet the will of God about that glory he would promote by the defect of the creature was positive, and therefore, he would not suffer so many positive acts of his will to hang upon an uncertain event, and therefore he did wisely and righteously order all things to the accomplishment of his great and gracious purposes. [1]

5. This act of permission doth not taint the holiness of God.

That there is such an act as permission is clear in Scripture: “Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways” (Acts 14:16), but that it doth not blemish the holiness of God will appear,

(1) From the nature of this permission.

[1] It is not a moral permission.

It is not a moral permission, a giving liberty of toleration by any law to commit sin with impunity, when what one law did forbid another law doth leave indifferent to be done or not, as a man sees good in himself; as when there is a law made among men, that no man shall go out of a city or country without license, to go without license is a crime by the law; but when that law is repealed by another, that gives liberty for men to go and come at their pleasure, it doth not make their going or coming necessary, but leaves those which were before bound, to do as they see good in themselves. Such a permission makes a fact lawful, though not necessary; a man is not obliged to do it, but he is left to his own discretion to do as he pleases, without being chargeable with a crime for doing it. Such a permission there was granted by God to Adam of eating of the fruits of the garden, to choose any of them for food, except the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It was a precept to him not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but the other was a permission, whereby it was lawful for him to feed upon any other that was most agreeable to his appetite. But there is not such a permission in the case of sin; this had been an indulgence of it which had freed man from any crime, and consequently from punishment, because by such a permission by law he would have had authority to sin if he pleased. God did not remove the law which he had before placed as a bar against evil, nor ceased that moral impediment of his threatening; such a permission as this, to make sin lawful or indifferent, had been a blot upon God’s holiness.

[2] God’s permission is no more than the not hindering a sinful action which he could have prevented.

But this permission of God in the case of sin, is no more than the not hindering a sinful action which he could have prevented. It is not so much an action of God, as a suspension of his influence, which might have hindered an evil act, and a forbearing to restrain the faculties of man from sin; it is properly the not exerting that efficacy which might change the counsels that are taken, and prevent the action intended; as when one man sees another ready to fall, and can preserve him from falling by reaching out his hand, he permits him to fall, that is, he hinders him not from falling: so God describes his act about Abimelech, “I withheld thee from sinning against me, therefore suffered I thee not to touch her” (Gen. 20:6). If Abimelech had sinned, he had sinned by God’s permission, that is, by God’s not hindering or not restraining him, by making any impressions upon him; so that permission is only a withholding that help and grace, which, if bestowed, would have been an effectual remedy to prevent a crime; and it is rather a suspension or cessation, than properly a permission; and sin may be said to be committed not without, God’s permission, rather than by his permission.

Thus in the fall of man, God did not hold the reins strict upon Satan to restrain him from laying the bait, nor restrain Adam from swallowing the bait; he kept to himself that efficacious grace which he might hare darted out upon man to prevent his fall. God left Satan to his malice of tempting, and Adam to his liberty of resisting and his own strength, to use that sufficient grace he had furnished him with, whereby he might have resisted and overcome the temptation. As he did not drive man to it, so he did not secretly restrain him from it. So in the Jews” crucifying our Saviour; God did not imprint upon their minds, by his Spirit, a consideration of the greatness of the crime, and the horror of his justice due to it, and being without those impediments, they run furiously of their own accord to the commission of that evil; as when a man lets a wolf or dog out upon his prey, he takes off the chain which held them, and they presently act according to their natures.

In the fall of angels and men, God’s act was a leaving them to their own strength. In sins after the fall, it is God’s giving them up to their own corruption. The first is a pure suspension of grace, the other hath the nature of a punishment: “so I gave them up to their own hearts’ lust” (Ps. 81:1). The first object of this permissive will of God was to leave angels and men to their own liberty and the use of their free will, which was natural to them, not adding that supernatural grace which was necessary, not that they should not at all sin, but that they should infallibly not sin; they had a strength sufficient to avoid sin, but not sufficient infallibly to avoid sin, a grace sufficient to preserve them, but not sufficient to confirm them.

[3] This permission is not the cause of sin.

Now this permission is not the cause of sin, nor doth blemish the holiness of God; it doth not intrench upon the freedom of men, but supported it, established it, and leaves man to it. God acted nothing, but only ceased to act, and therefore could not be the efficient cause of man’s sin. As God is not the author of good but by willing and effecting it, so he is not the author of evil but by willing and effecting it. But he doth not positively will evil, nor effect it by any efficacy of his own. Permission is no action, nor the cause of that action which is permitted, but the will of that person who is permitted to do such an action is the cause. God can no more be said to be the cause of sin, by suffering a creature to act as it will, than be can be said to be the cause of the not being of any creature by denying it being, and letting it remain nothing; it is not from God that it is nothing, it is nothing in itself. Though God be said to be the cause of creation, yet he is never by any said to be the cause of that nothing which was before creation. This permission of God is not the cause of sin, but the cause of not hindering sin. Man and angels had a physical power of sinning from God, as they were created with free will and supported in their natural strength, but the moral power to sin was not from God; he counseled them not to it, laid no obligation upon them to use their natural power for such an end; he only left them to their freedom, and not hindered them in their acting what he was resolved to permit.

(2) The holiness of God is not tainted by this, because he was under no obligation to hinder their commission of sin.

Ceasing to act, whereby to prevent a crime for mischief, brings not a person permitting it under guilt, unless where he is under an obligation to prevent it; but God, in regard of his absolute dominion, cannot be charged with any such obligation. One man that doth not hinder the murder of another when it is in his power, is guilty of the murder in part; but it is to be considered that he is under a tie by nature, as being of the same kind, and being the other’s brother by a communion of blood, also under an obligation of the law of charity, enacted by the common sovereign of the world; but what tie was there upon God, since the infinite transcendency of his nature and his sovereign dominion frees him from any such obligation? “If he takes away, who shall say, What dost thou?” (Job 9:12). God might have prevented the fall of men and angels, he might have confirmed them all in a state of perpetual innocency, but where is the obligation? He had made the creature a debtor to himself, but he owed nothing to the creature.

Before God can be charged with any guilt in this case, it must be proved, not only that he could, but that he was bound to hinder it. No person can be justly charged with another’s fault merely for not preventing it, unless he be bound to prevent it; else not only the first sin of angels and man would be imputed to God as the author, but all the sins of men. He could not be obliged by any law, because he had no superior to impose any law upon him, and it will be hard to prove that he was obliged from his own nature to prevent the entrance of sin, which he would use as an occasion to declare his own holiness, so transcendent a perfection of his nature, more than ever it could have been manifested by a total exclusion of it, viz., in the death of Christ. He is no more bound in his own nature to preserve, by supernatural grace, his creatures from falling after he had framed them with sufficient strength to stand, than he was obliged in his own nature to bring his creature into being, when it was nothing. He is not bound to create a rational creature, much less bound to create him with supernatural gifts; though, since God would make a rational creature, he could not but make him with a natural, uprightness and rectitude.

God did as much for angels and men as became a wise governor. He had published his law, backed it with severe penalties, and the creature wanted not a natural strength to observe and obey it. Had not man a power to obey all the precepts of the law as well as one? How was God bound to give him more grace, since what he had already was enough to shield him, and keep up his resistance against all the power of hell! It had been enough to have pointed his will against the temptation, and he had kept off the force of it. Was there any promise passed to Adam of any further grace, which he could plead as a tie upon God? No such voluntary limit upon God’s supreme dominion appears upon record. Was anything due to man which he had not? anything promised him which was not performed? What action of debt, then, can the creature bring against God?

Indeed, when man began to neglect the light of his own reason, and became inconsiderate of the precept, God might have enlightened his understanding by a special flash, a supernatural beam, and imprinted upon him a particular consideration of the necessity of his obedience, the misery he was approaching to by his sin, the folly of any such apprehension of an equality in knowledge; he might have convinced him of the falsity of the serpent’s arguments, and uncased to him the venom that lay under those baits. But how doth it appear that God was bound to those additional acts, when he had already lighted up in him a spirit which was “the candle of the Lord” (Prov. 20:27), whereby he was able to discern all, if he had attended to it.

It was enough that God did not necessitate man to sin, did not counsel him to it, that he had given him sufficient warning in the threatening, and sufficient strength in his faculties, to fortify him against temptation. He gave him what was due to him as a creature of his own framing, he withdrew no help from him that was due to him as a creature, and what was not due he was not bound to impart. Man did not beg preserving grace of God, and God was not bound to offer it when he was not petitioned for it especially; yet if he had begged it, God having before furnished him sufficiently, might, by the right of his sovereign dominion, have denied it without any impeachment of his holiness and righteousness. Though he would not in such a case have dealt so bountifully with his creature as he might have done, yet he could not have been impleaded as dealing unrighteously with his creature. The single word that God had already uttered when he gave him his precept, was enough to oppose against all the devil’s wiles, which tended to invalidate that word. The understanding of man could not imagine that the word of God was vainly spoken; and the very suggestion of the devil, as if the Creator should envy his creature, would have appeared ridiculous if he had attended to the voice of his own reason. God had done enough for him, and was obliged to do no more, and dealt not unrighteously in leaving him to act according to the principles of his nature.

To conclude, If God’s permission of sin were enough to charge it upon God, or if God had been obliged to give Adam supernatural grace, Adam, that had so capacious a brain, could not be without that plea in his mouth, Lord, thou mightest have prevented it; the commission of it by me could not have been without thy permission of it; or, Thou hast been wanting to me, as the author of my nature. No such plea is brought by Adam into the court, when God tried and cast him; no such pleas can have any strength in them. Adam had reason enough to know that there was sufficient reason to overrule such a plea.

Since the permission of sin casts no dirt upon the holiness of God, as I think hath been cleared, we may under this head consider two things more.

6. God’s permission of sin is not so much as his restraint or limitation of it.

Since the entrance of the first sin into the world by Adam, God is more a hinderer than a permitter of it. If he hath permitted that which he could have prevented, he prevents a world more, that he might, if he pleased, permit. The hedges about sin are larger than the outlets; they are but a few streams that glide about the world, in comparison of that mighty torrent he dams up both in men and devils. He that understands what a lake of Sodom is in every man’s nature, since the universal infection of human nature, as the apostle describes it (Rom. 3:9-10), must acknowledge, that if God should cast the reins upon the necks of sinful men, they would ran into thousands of abominable crimes more than they do. The impression of all natural laws would be razed out, the world would be a public stew, and a more bloody slaughter-house; human society would sink into a chaos; no star-light of commendable morality would be seen in it; the world would be no longer an earth, but a hell, and have lain deeper in wickedness than it doth. If God did not limit sin, as he doth the sea, and put bars to the waves of the heart, as well as those of the waters, and say of them, “Hitherto you shall go, and no further,” man hath such a furious ocean in him, as would overflow the banks; and where it makes a breach in one place, it would in a thousand, if God should suffer it to act according to its impetuous current.

The devil hath lust enough to destroy all mankind, if God did not bridle him; deal with every man as he did with Job, ruin their comforts, and deform their bodies with scabs; infect religion with a thousand more errors; fling disorders into commonwealths, and make them as a fiery furnace, full of nothing but flame. If he were not chained by that powerful arm, that might let him loose to fulfill his malicious fury, what rapines, murders, thefts, would be committed, if he did not stint him! Abimelech would not only lust after Sarah, but deflower her; Laban not only pursue Jacob, but rifle him; Saul not only hate David, but murder him; David not only threaten Nabal, but root him up, and his family, did not God restrain the wrath of man (Ps. 76:10). A greater remainder of wrath is pent in, than flames out, which yet swells for an outlet. God may be concluded more holy in preventing men’s sins, than the author of sin in permitting some; since, were it not for his restraints, by the pull-back of conscience, and infused motions and outward impediments, the world would swarm more with this cursed brood.

7. His permission of sin is in order to his own glory and a greater good.

It is no reflection upon the divine goodness to leave man to his own conduct, whereby such a deformity as sin sets foot in the world; since he makes his wisdom illustrious in bringing good out of evil, and a good greater than that evil he suffered to spring up. God did not permit sin, as sin, or permit it barely for itself. As sin is not lovely in its own nature, so neither is the permission of sin intrinsically good or amiable for itself, but for those ends aimed at in the permission of it. God permitted sin, but approved not of the object of that permission, sin; because that, considered in its own nature, is solely evil: nor can we think that God could approve of the act of permission, considered only in itself as an act, but as it respected that event which his wisdom would order by it.

We cannot suppose that God should permit sin, but for some great and glorious end; for it is the manifestation of his own glorious perfections he intends in all the acts of his will: “The Lord hath made all things for himself” (Prov. 16:4)—hath wrought (פעל) all things, which is not only his act of creation, but ordination; for himself, that is, for the discovery of the excellency of his nature, and the communication of himself to his creature. Sin, indeed, in its own nature, hath no tendency to a good end; the womb of it teems with nothing but monsters; it is a spurn at God’s sovereignty, and a slight of his goodness. It both deforms and torments the person that acts it; it is black and abominable, and hath not a mite of goodness in the nature of it. If it ends in any good, it is only from that infinite transcendency of skill that can bring good out of evil, as well as light out of darkness.

Therefore God did not permit it as sin, but as it was an occasion for the manifestation of his own glory. Though the goodness of God would have appeared in the preservation of the world, as well as it did in the creation of it, yet his mercy could not have appeared without the entrance of sin, because the object of mercy is a miserable creature; but man could not be miserable as long as he remained innocent. The reign of sin opened a door for the reign and triumph of grace: “As sin hath reigned unto death, so might grace reign through righteousness to eternal life” (Rom. 5:21).

Without it, the bowels of mercy had never sounded, and the ravishing music of divine grace could never have been heard by the creature. Mercy, which renders God so amiable, could never else have beamed out to the world. Angels and men upon this occasion beheld the stirrings of divine grace, and the tenderness of divine nature, and the glory of the divine persons in their several functions about the redemption of man, which had else been a spring shut up and a fountain sealed; the song of “Glory to God, and goodwill to men” (Luke 2:14), in a way of redemption, had never been sung by them.

It appears in his dealings with Adam, that he permitted his fall, not only to shew his justice in punishing, but principally his mercy in rescuing; since he proclaims to him first the promise of a Redeemer to bruise the serpent’s head, before he settled the punishment he should smart under in the world (Gen. 3:15-17). And what fairer prospect could the creature have of the holiness of God, and his hatred of sin, than in the edge of that sword of justice which punished it in the sinner, but glittered more in the punishment of a surety so near allied to him? Had not man been criminal, he could not have been punishable, nor any been punishable for him; and the pulse of divine holiness could not have beaten so quick, and been so visible, without an exercise of his vindicative justice. He left man’s mutable nature to fall under unrighteousness, that thereby he might commend the righteousness of his own nature (Rom. 3:7).

Adam’s sin in its nature tended to the ruin of the world, and God takes an occasion from it for the glory of his grace in the redemption of the world. He brings forth thereby a new scene of wonders from heaven, and a surprising knowledge on earth: as the sun breaks out more strongly after a night of darkness and tempest. As God in creation framed a chaos by his power, to manifest his wisdom in bringing order out of disorder, light out of darkness, beauty out of confusion and deformity, when he was able by a word to have made all creatures to stand up in their beauty, without the precedency of a chaos: so God permitted a moral chaos, to manifest a greater wisdom in the repairing a broken image, and restoring a deplorable creature, and bringing out those perfections of his nature, which had else been wrapt up in a perpetual silence in his bosom. It was therefore very congruous to the holiness of God, to permit that which he could make subservient for his own glory, and particularly for the manifestation of this attribute of holiness, which seems to be in opposition to such a permission.

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[1] cf. Westminster Confession of Faith 5.4, “The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God so far manifest themselves in his providence that it extendeth itself even to the first fall, and all other sins of angels and men (2 Sam 16:10; 24:1 with 1 Chr 21:1; 1 Kings 22:22-23; 1 Chr 10:4, 13-14; Acts 2:23; 4:27-28; Rom 11:32-34), and that not by a bare permission (Acts 14:16), but such as hath joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding (2 Kings 19:28; Ps 76:10), and otherwise ordering and governing of them, in a manifold dispensation, to his own holy ends (Gen 50:20; Isa 10:6-7, 12); yet so as the sinfulness thereof proceedeth only from the creature, and not from God; who, being most holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin (Ps 50:21; James 1:13-14, 17; 1 John 2:16).”