ON THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD 1

. The providence of God is subordinate to creation; and it is, therefore, necessary that it should not impinge against creation, which it would do, were it to inhibit or hinder the use of free will in man, or should deny to man its necessary concurrence, or should direct man to another end, or to destruction, than to that which is agreeable to the condition and state in which he was created; that is, if the providence of God should so rule and govern man that he should necessarily become corrupt, in order that God might manifest his own glory, both of justice and mercy, through the sin of man, according to his eternal counsel. 2. It appertains to the providence of God to act and permit; which two things are confounded when permission is changed into action under this pretext -- that it cannot be idle or unemployed. 3. Divine providence does not determine a free will to one part of a contradiction or contrariety, that is, by a determination preceding the actual volition itself; under other circumstances the concurrence of the very volition with the will is the concomitant cause, and thus determines the will with the volition itself, by an act which is not previous but simultaneous, as the schoolmen express themselves. 4. The permission of God by which he permits any one to fall into sin is not correctly defined as "the subtraction or withdrawing of divine grace, by which, while God executes the decrees of his will through his rational creatures, he either does not unfold to the creature his own will by which he wills that wicked work to be done, or he does not bend the will of the man to obey the divine will in that action." (Ursinus On Providence, tom. I, fol. 178.)