ts
source and its reason are demonstrated. One will not approve the action of
a queen who, under the pretext of saving the State, commits or even permits
a crime. The crime is certain and the evil for the State is open to
question. Moreover, this manner of giving sanction to crimes, if it were
accepted, would be worse than a disruption of some one country, which is
liable enough to happen in any case, and would perchance happen all the
more by reason of such means chosen to prevent it. But in relation to God
nothing is open to question, nothing can be opposed to _the rule of the
best_, which suffers neither exception nor dispensation. It is in this
sense that God permits sin: for he would fail in what he owes to himself,
in what he owes to his wisdom, his goodness, his perfection, if he followed
not the grand result of all his tendencies to good, and if he chose not
that which is absolutely the best, notwithstanding the evil of guilt, which
is involved therein by the supreme necessity of the eternal verities. Hence
the conclusion that God wills all good _in himself antecedently_, that he
wills the best _consequently_ as an _end_, that he wills what is
indifferent, and physical evil, sometimes as a _means_, but that he will
only permit moral evil as the _sine quo non_ or as a hypothetical necessity
which connects it with the best. Therefore the _consequent will_ of God,
which has sin for its object, is only _permissive_.

26. It is again well to consider that moral evil is an evil so great only
because it is a source of physical evils, a source existing in one of the
most powerful of creatures, who is also most capable of causing those
evils. For an evil will is in its department what the evil principle of the
Manichaeans would be in the universe; and reason, which is an image of the
Divinity, provides for evil souls great means of causing much evil. One
single Caligula, one Nero, has caused more evil than an earthquake. An evil
man takes pleasure in causing suffering and destruction, and for that there
are only too many opportunities. But God being inclined to produce as much
good as possible, and having all the knowledge and all the power necessary
for that, it is impossible that in him there be fault, or guilt, or sin;
and when he permits sin, it is wisdom, it is virtue.

27. It is indeed beyond question that we must refrain from preventing the
sin of others when we cannot prevent their sin without sinning ourselves.