ne wills it. But when it
is a crime, God can only will the permission of it: the crime is neither an
end nor a means, it is only a _conditio sine qua non_; thus it is not the
object of a direct will, as I have already demonstrated above. God cannot
prevent it without acting against what he owes to himself, without doing
something that would be worse than the crime of man, without violating the
rule of the best; and that would be to destroy divinity, as I have already
observed. God is therefore bound by a moral necessity, which is in himself,
to permit moral evil in creatures. There is precisely the case wherein the
will of a wise mind is only permissive. I have already said this: he is
bound to permit the crime of others when he cannot prevent it without
himself failing in that which he owes to himself.

159. 'But among all these infinite combinations', says M. Bayle (p. 853),
'it pleased God to choose one wherein Adam was to sin, and by his decree he
made it, in preference to all the others, the plan that should come to
pass.' Very good; that is speaking my language; so long as one applies it
to the combinations which compose the whole universe. 'You will therefore
never make us understand', he adds, 'how God did not will that Eve and Adam
should sin, since he rejected all the combinations wherein they would not
have sinned.' But the thing is in general very easy to understand, from all
that I have just said. This combination that makes the whole universe is
the best; God therefore could not refrain from choosing it without [223]
incurring a lapse, and rather than incur such, a thing altogether
inappropriate to him, he permits the lapse or the sin of man which is
involved in this combination.

160. M. Jacquelot, with other able men, does not differ in opinion from me,
when for example he says, p. 186 of his treatise on the _Conformity of
Faith with Reason_: 'Those who are puzzled by these difficulties seem to be
too limited in their outlook, and to wish to reduce all God's designs to
their own interests. When God formed the universe, his whole prospect was
himself and his own glory, so that if we had knowledge of all creatures, of
their diverse combinations and of their different relations, we should
understand without difficulty that the universe corresponds perfectly to
the infinite wisdom of the Almighty.' He says elsewhere (p. 232):
'Supposing the impossible, that God could not prevent the wrong use of free
will