X VOLITION : LIBERTY AND NECESSITY 225 



curious to watch the struggle between the theo- 

 logical controversialist, striving to ward off an 

 admission which he knows will be employed to 

 damage his side, and the acute logician, conscious 

 that, in some shape or other, the admission must 

 be made. Beginning with a tu quoque, that the 

 Arminian doctrine involves consequences as bad 

 as the Calvinistic view, he proceeds to object to 

 the term "author of sin," though he ends by 

 admitting that, in a certain sense, it is applicable ; 

 he proves from Scripture, that God is the disposer 

 and orderer of sin ; and then, by an elaborate false 

 analogy with the darkness resulting from the 

 absence of the sun, endeavours to suggest that he 

 is only the author of it in a negative sense ; and, 

 finally, he takes refuge in the conclusion that, 

 though God is the orderer and disposer of those 

 deeds which, considered in relation to their agents, 

 are morally evil, yet inasmuch as His purpose has 

 all along been infinitely good, they are not evil 

 relatively to Him. 



And this, of course, may be perfectly true ; but 

 if true, it is inconsistent with the attribute of 

 Omnipotence. It is conceivable that there should 

 be no evil in the world ; that which is conceivable 

 is certainly possible ; if it were possible for evil to 

 be non-existent, the maker of the world, who, 

 though foreknowing the existence of evil in that 

 world, did not prevent it, either did not really 

 desire it should not exist, or could not prevent its 



VOL. VI Q 



