Not by permitting the evil action, because he is bound by no law to hinder sin. Not by determining it; for as he who puts out a fire so that it may not spread further is not the cause of the fire, so he who fixes bounds to sin is not the cause of sin. Not by directing it to a good end; for as it is the highest art to prepare a wholesome medicine from venomous animals, so it is glorious for God to draw light even out of darkness, and something good out of evils.

God leaves the sinner so far as he sees meet to the swing of his own lusts, and denies him restraining grace. … And when the restraint is taken off the sinner, he runs furiously, to evil. 3. God bounds sin, and restrains men in their sins, as he does the raging sea, allowing it to go so far, but no further.

God acted nothing, but only ceased to act, and therefore could not be the efficient cause of man’s sin. As God is not the author of good but by willing and effecting it, so he is not the author of evil but by willing and effecting it. But he doth not positively will evil, nor effect it by any efficacy of his own. Permission is no action, nor the cause of that action which is permitted, but the will of that person who is permitted to do such an action is the cause.

When God is here spoken of as hardening some of the children of men, it is not to be understood that God by any positive efficiency hardens any man's heart. There is no positive act in God, as though he put forth any power to harden the heart. To suppose any such thing would be to make God the immediate author of sin. God is said to harden men in two ways: by withholding the powerful influences of his Spirit, without which their hearts will remain hardened, and grow harder and harder; in this sense he hardens them, as he leaves them to hardness. And again, by ordering those things in his providence which, through the abuse of their corruption, become the occasion of their hardening.

He wills it not by his effective will, but by his permissive will; and therefore cannot be chargeable with being the author of sin; since there is a wide difference between doing it himself, and doing it by others, or ordering it to be done, which only can make him the author of sin; and voluntarily permitting or suffering it to be done by others.