as vice, was the only means of attaining to this end, it will follow that God of necessity loves vice as vice, a thought which can only inspire us with horror; and he has revealed quite the contrary to us.’  He observes at the same time that certain doctors among the Supralapsarians (like Rutherford, for example) denied that God wills sin as sin, whilst they admitted [270] that he wills sin permissively in so far as it is punishable and pardonable.  But he urges in objection, that an action is only punishable and pardonable in so far as it is vicious.

230.  M. Bayle makes a false assumption in these words that we have just read, and draws from them false conclusions.  It is not true that God loves his glory by necessity, if thereby it is understood that he is led by necessity to acquire his glory through his creatures.  For if that were so, he would acquire his glory always and everywhere.  The decree to create is free:  God is prompted to all good; the good, and even the best, inclines him to act; but it does not compel him, for his choice creates no impossibility in that which is distinct from the best; it causes no implication of contradiction in that which God refrains from doing.  There is therefore in God a freedom that is exempt not only from constraint but also from necessity.  I mean this in respect of metaphysical necessity; for it is a moral necessity that the wisest should be bound to choose the best.  It is the same with the means which God chooses to attain his glory.  And as for vice, it has been shown in preceding pages that it is not an object of God’s decree as means, but as conditio sine qua non, and that for that reason alone it is permitted.  One is even less justified in saying that vice is the only means; it would be at most one of the means, but one of the least among innumerable others.

231.  ‘Another frightful consequence,’ M. Bayle goes on, ’the fatality of all things, ensues:  God will not have been free to arrange events in a different way, since the means he chose to show forth his glory was the only means befitting his wisdom.’  This so-called fatality or necessity is only moral, as I have just shown:  it does not affect freedom; on the contrary, it assumes the best use thereof; it does not render impossible the objects set aside by God’s choice.  ‘What, then, will become’, he adds, ’of man’s free will?  Will there not have been necessity and fatality for Adam to sin?  For if he had not sinned, he would have overthrown the sole plan that God had of necessity created.’  That is again a misuse of terms.  Adam sinning freely was seen of God among the ideas of the possibles, and God decreed to admit him into existence as he saw him.  This decree does not change the nature of the objects:  it does not render necessary that which was contingent in itself, or impossible that which was possible.