the existence of sin is consistent with his divine perfections. His Avork is religious in its spirit and object, however erroneous and dangerous in some of its principles. He assumed that this is the best possible world. As sin exists in the world, it must be neces- sary or unavoidable. It is not to be referred to the agency of God. But as God is the universal agent according to Leibnitz's philoso- phy, sin must be a simple negation or privation for which no effi- cient cause is needed. These are the two points to be established. First, that sin is unavoidable ; and secondly, that it is not due to the agency of God. It is unavoidable, because it arises out of the necessary limitation of the creature. The creature cannot be absolutely perfect. His knowledge and power must be limited. But if limited, they must not only be liable to error, but error or wrong action is unavoidable, or you would have absolutely perfect action from a less than absolutely perfect agent ; the effect would transcend the power of the cause. Evil, therefore, according to Leibnitz, arises " par la supreme necessity des v^rites eternelles." ^ *' Le franc-arbitre va au bien, et s'il rencontre le mal, c'est par accident, c'est que le mal est cache sous le bien et comme masque." The origin of evil is thus indeed referred to the will, but the will is unavoidably, or of necessity led into error, by the limitations inseparable from the nature of a creature. If, therefore, God cre- ated a world at all, He must create one from which sin could not be excluded. Such being the origin and nature of sin, it follows that God is not its author. Providence, according to Leibnitz, is a con- tinued creation (at least this is the view presented in some parts of his " Th^odic^e " 2), therefore all that is positive and real must be due to his agency. But sin being merely negation, or privation, is nothing positive, and therefore does not need an efficient, but simply a deficient cause to account for its existence. The similarity in mode of statement between this doctrine and the Augustinian doctrine which makes all sin defect, and which reconciles its existence with the holiness of God on the same principle as that adopted by Leib- nitz, is obvious to all. It is however merely a similarity in the mode of expression. The two doctrines are essentially different, as we shall see when the Augustinian theory comes to be considered. With Augustine, defect is the absence of a moral good which the creature should possess ; with Leibnitz, negation is the necessary limitation of the powers of the creature.
The objections to this theory which makes sin mere privation,
1 Tkeodicee, i. 25, Works, edit. Berlin, 1840, p. 511.
2 Theodicec, i. 27, and iii. 381.
136 PART n. ch. vni. — sm.
and refers it to the nature of creatures as finite beings, are substan- tially the same as those already presented as bearing against the other theories before mentioned. (1.) In the first place, it makes sin a necessary evil. Creatures are of necessity imperfect or finite; and if sin be the unavoidable consequence of such imperfection, or limitation of being, sin also becomes a necessary evil. (2.) It makes God after all the author of sin in so far as it throws upon Him the responsibility for its existence. For even admitting that it is a mere negation, requiring no efficient cause, nevertheless God is the author of the limitation in the creature whence sin of necessity flows. He has so constituted the works of his hand, that they cannot but sin, just as the child cannot but err in its judgments. Reason is so feeble even in the adult man that mistakes as to the nature and causes of things are absolutely unavoidable. And if sin be equally unavoidable from the very constitution of the crea- ture, God, who is the author of that constitution, becomes responsi- ble for its existence. This is not only derogatory to the character of God, but directly opposed to the teachings of his Word. The Bible never refers the origin of sin, whether in angels or in men, to the necessary hmitations of their being as creatures, but to the perverted and inexcusable use of their own free agency. The fallen angels kept not their first estate ; and man, being left to the freedom of his own will, fell from the estate in which he was cre- ated. (3.) This theory tends to obliterate the distinction between moral and physical evil. If sin be mere privation, or if it be the necessary consequence of the feebleness of the creature, it is the object of pity rather than of abhorrence. In the writings of the advocates of this theory the two senses of the words good and evil, the moral and the physical, are constantly interchanged and con- founded ; because evil according to their views is really little more than a misfortune, an unavoidable mistake as to what is really good. The distinction, however, between virtue and vice, holiness and sin, as revealed in our consciousness and in the woi'd of God, is absolute and entire. Both are simple ideas. We know what pain is from expei'ience ; we know what sin is from the same source. We know that the two are as different as day and night, as light and sound. Any theory, therefore, which tends to con- found them, must be false. Accordingly, in the Scriptures while mere suffering is always presented as an object of commiseration, sin is presented as an object of abhorrence and condemnation. The wrath and curse of God are denounced against all sin as its just desert. (4.) This doctrine, therefore, necessarily tends not only
§ 2.] PHILOSOrmCAL THEORIES. 137
to lessen our sense of the evil or pollution of sin, but also to destroy the sense of guilt. Our sins are our misfortunes, our in- firmities. They are not what conscience pronounces them to be, crimes caHing for condign punishment. Sin, however, reveals itself in our consciousness not as a weakness, but as a power. It is greatest in the strongest. It is not the feeble-minded who are the worst of men ; but those great in intellect have been, in many cases, the greatest in iniquity. Satan, the worst of created beings, is the most powerful of creatures. (5.) If this theory be correct, sin must be everlasting. As we can never be free from the limitations of our being, we can never be free from sin to which those limita- tions unavoidably give rise. The soul, therefore, as has been said, is the asymptote of God, forever approaching but never reaching the state of absolute sinlessness.
Sin necessary Antagonism.
Still another theory obviously inconsistent with the facts of con- sciousness and the teachings of the Bible, is that which accounts for sin on the law of necessary opposition, or antagonism. All life, it is said, implies action and reaction. Even in the material uni- verse the same law prevails. The heavenly bodies are kept in their orbits by the balance of centrifugal and centripetal forces. There is polarity in light, and in magnetism and electricity. All chemical changes are produced by attraction and repulsion. Thus in the animal world there is no strength without obstacles to be overcome ; no rest without fatigue ; no life without death. So also the mind is developed by continual struggles, by constant conflict with what is within and without. The same law, it is urged, must prevail in the moral world. There can be no good without evil. Good is the resistance or the overcoming of evil. What the ma- terial universe would be, had matter but one property ; if every- thing were oxygen or everything carbon ; what life would be with- out action and reaction ; what the mind would be without the struggle with error and search after truth ; such, it is said, the moral world would be without sin ; a stagnant, lifeless pool. So far as creatures are concerned, it is maintained, that it is a law of their constitution, that they should be developed by antagonism, by the action of contrary forces, or opposing principles ; so that a moral world without sin is an impossibility. Sin is the necessary condition of the existence of virtue.
This general theory is of early origin and wide dissemination. In its latest form, as presented by Blasche and Rosenkranz, the uni-
138 PART n. ch. vm. — sin.