23.  Thence it follows that God wills antecedently the good and consequently the best.  And as for evil, God wills moral evil not at all, and physical evil or suffering he does not will absolutely.  Thus it is that there is no absolute predestination to damnation; and one may say of physical evil, that God wills it often as a penalty owing to guilt, and often also as a means to an end, that is, to prevent greater evils or to obtain greater good.  The penalty serves also for amendment and example.  Evil often serves to make us savour good the more; sometimes too it contributes to a greater perfection in him who suffers it, as the seed that one sows is subject to a kind of corruption before it can germinate:  this is a beautiful similitude, which Jesus Christ himself used.

24.  Concerning sin or moral evil, although it happens very often that it may serve as a means of obtaining good or of preventing another evil, it is not this that renders it a sufficient object of the divine will or a legitimate object of a created will.  It must only be admitted or permitted in so far as it is considered to be a certain consequence of an indispensable duty:  as for instance if a man who was determined not to permit another’s sin were to fail of his own duty, or as if an officer on guard at an important post were to leave it, especially in time of danger, in order to prevent a quarrel in the town between two soldiers of the garrison who wanted to kill each other.

25.  The rule which states, non esse facienda mala, ut eveniant bona, and which even forbids the permission of a moral evil with the end of [138] obtaining a physical good, far from being violated, is here proved, and its 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.