By FRANCIS TURRETIN.
(Continued from p. 15.)
XXII. Hatred will be necessary from a consideration of opposite things. (3) Because if His act were free and indifferent He would be at liberty not to exercise it, nay, He would justly be able to wish the contrary, that is to love sin; for acts which are founded in will only are most free, and the will of God is inclined to no object so that if it were bent towards the contrary it could be done justly; who indeed does not shudder at this? In regard to the second point, we believe that the hatred and punishment of sin are so closely tied together that the former cannot exist without the latter; otherwise it would follow that God is always displeased with sin, and yet He is able to receive such a sinner to Himself, for if He is able not to punish, He is able to condone, if it is possible for Him to condone, it is possible for Him to cherish such a sinner in His bosom; similarly what is adduced is manifestly at variance; the ways of God and our ways are different. It is our part to hate sin without private revenge, which only belongs to those who have constituted authority, but concerning God it has been said without exception, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” Therefore aversion is in our case often ineffectual and frigid, either because we are unwilling or unable to strike, for that reason magistrates and parents not seldom sin here by unseasonable indulgence, or they are lacking in the power of punishing because anger is vain without power. But God utterly hates sin as injuring His own glory and because He is powerful in the highest degree, He punishes infallibly: He postpones indeed sometimes or transfers the penalty, but does not wholly take it away; on all occasions He renders punishment if not on the persons of those sinning at any rate to their surety. Thirdly, I say that arguments of our opponents are not always admissible in theology, we are ordered to love our friends, who, however, would deduct that we ought to hate our enemies as the Pharisees do maliciously, thus evil deeds are the cause of destruction and good of salvation, for neither do good works necessarily bring salvation as evil works bring ruin, the latter, of course, cause and deserve death properly because they are ours and undue, but the former have no such disposition towards salvation because they neither are ours nor undue, and if they are necessary for it the necessity is only of presence and not of efficacy or merit, as of conditions in the case of those who are saved and not as the causes of that salvation. And so not even if it were possible for God to punish where He does not hate, would He forthwith be able to hate and not to punish. 2. It is false that God ever punished without hatred, nor does the example of Christ prove this, for although in Himself personally He was most beloved of His Father, however as our surety and sponsor Who received our sins to Himself, He perceived an angry God, and complained that He was forsaken by God.
XXIII. Further, this can be abundantly confirmed, whether we consider the nature of sin, or the condition of God Himself in this very matter; for as far as the nature of sin indeed is concerned, since it ought to be certain and beyond all hazard of doubt, that there is some natural difference between virtue and vice, and not only positive and free, as Carneades once supposed, who taught that justice and injustice were only names, but that the matter was changeable at the will of mankind; in like manner it is certain and manifest that moral good is united with physical good, and that physical evil is united with moral evil by a certain natural necessity, that the former has a purport of reward the latter of punishment, in as much as they are coupled to both in the same kind either of good or evil, and it is altogether becoming to the divine wisdom that these things should be placed together, nor can it be imagined without absurdity that either most absolute holiness is accompanied perpetually by misery and calamity, or that the worst crime is joined with the highest degree of joyful felicity.—Translated from the Latin by Rev. D. J. Macaskill, M.A.