Francis Turretin

First, the offering of occasions which can be procured only by the peculiar providence of God by the concourse of circumstances and the proposition of objects, fitted to move faculties constituted in this or that way (in which manner God does not infuse wickedness into the minds of men, but draws out into action the wickedness latent there).

The decree which is the cause of the futurition of sin is nevertheless neither its physical cause (by the infusion of evil) nor its ethical cause (by the approbation of it). So although sin necessarily follows the decree, it cannot be said to flow from the decree. The decree does not flow into the thing, nor is it effective of evil, but only permissive and directive.

God is said to blind and to harden men not only negatively (by not enlightening and softening) and privatively (by withdrawing his grace whatever it may have been after men have abused it) and permissively (by not hindering), but also positively. Not by bringing in blindness or hardness (which is natural to man), but both objectively by presenting external objects to them which although ordained to another direction by their own nature, yet he knows will be drawn in a different way by their vice; and judicially by smiting them internally with blindness (the light which they abused being taken away or extinguished); and by loosening the reins to their lusts and delivering them up and enslaving them to Satan.

Although the premotion of God is extended to evil actions, it does not on that account make God guilty of the fault or the author of sin. It only pertains to actions inasmuch as they are material and entitative (entitative), not however as they are moral, i.e., to the substance of the act, but not to its wickedness. … The magistrate is the cause of the death inflicted on the guilty person by the executioner, but is not the cause of the cruelty exhibited in that execution; the harp player is the cause of the sound, but not of the dissonance arising from the strings; and he who drives a lame horse is the cause of the motion, but not the lameness.

In evil actions, however, he so concurs as neither to effect, assist, nor approve of them, but to permit and efficaciously direct; not by infusing wickedness, but by so determining rational creatures physically to the substance of the act in the genus of being, that they (when left to themselves failing from the law) move and determine themselves to bad actions in the genus of morals, performing them freely and voluntarily (hekousiōs). Hence the guilt rests upon them alone.

Now although souls are created by God destitute of original righteousness, God cannot on that account be considered the author of sin. It is one thing to infuse impurity; another not to give the purity of which man has rendered himself unworthy in Adam.

As to the first, they deny that concupiscence or tinder is prohibited by the law of God because they do not consider it to be a sin. … But the orthodox think concupiscence is both properly sin and is prohibited by the law.

Now who can believe that Paul would so often and so expressly have called that sin, if it was not true sin and properly so called, but only because it flowed from sin and inclined to sin (as the Council falsely maintained)?

So far is it from being lawfully inferred from this that lust is not sin that by necessary consequence its sinfulness can thence be elicited. The effect ought to correspond with the cause; nor could lust bring forth actual sin unless it is itself sin.

Since the precept about not coveting is general, it ought to be extended to all depraved and inordinate concupiscence, original and habitual as well as actual—whether this is determinate and voluntary or still indeterminate and only titillating. This is true in order that the perfect purity and holiness of the lawgiver may be noted (which will suffer not even the smallest taint of depraved concupiscence in man, but demands righteousness and holiness of every kind).

On the contrary, as we think concupiscence is evil in its root and forbidden by the law, so also as to all the acts and motions springing from it, whether they follow or precede the formal consent of the will.

Such motions are not consistent with the holiness and purity which God demands from us and the required perfection of loving God with the whole heart and all the strength; therefore they cannot but be depraved and lawless (anomoi).

Now although by regeneration we hold that the guilt and pollution of original sin is taken away as to dominion (because it is neither imputed to them anymore for condemnation, nor does it reign in them), yet we deny that it is absolutely taken away as to existence and whatever holds the relation of sin in it.

It is one thing that there should be no condemnation in the renewed; another that they are worthy of condemnation and of hatred. The former Paul states in Rom. 8:1 because actual guilt is removed by the grace of justification, but not the latter.

Nothing is more frequent among them than to call the blessed virgin a redemptress and deliverer from sins.

This is especially evident with respect to the blessed virgin, to whom they not only frequently ascribe divine names and articles (when they call her "Goddess, Mistress, Queen of Heaven, Mother of Mercy, Redemptress, Our Omnipotent Mistress, the Refuge of sinners"), but also worship internal as well as external.