The Renewal of the Evangelical Spirit

[...always] This word completes the sentence from the previous page: "always wills] well, and never evil." well, and never evil: although the Scrip-
e Lamentations of Jeremiah 3:38.

ture says: e that evil and good come from God, it does not mean that God performs the evil, but rather man alone performs the evil by using f 4 Esdras 8:57. f his freedom to do ill. And one can truly say that this Freedom comes from God, but not the bad usage of it. Just as a good craftsman, making a sharp and well-tempered knife for the convenience and good use of the person, that person may abuse it for an evil end and kill his brother with that knife, without one being able to say with truth that this homicide was committed by the knife-maker, even though the instrument with which the homicide was committed comes from the knife-maker. In the same way, one cannot say without blasphemy that God has performed any evils, since he has given man his full freedom to do well and to LOVE g Proverbs 23:26. g him VOLUNTARILY, given that his God created him for THIS SOLE PURPOSE.

XII. Hell will be Eternal as well as Paradise.

h Ecclesiastes 3:14.

But if man abuses the Eternity and the Freedom that God has given him, h he cannot prevent himself from being eternal and forever free, because God willed him to have this nature, and not to be a species of creature constrained or limited by time—as many ill-advised people The author is likely targeting "Universalism" or "Apocatastasis," the belief that all beings, including the damned, will eventually be saved. This was a significant point of contention in 17th-century mystical and radical theology. like to imagine that Hell will not be eternal, but rather that damned souls will return again to the grace of God after having suffered for some time in Hell. This is invented to flatter the wicked man who did not want to remain in THE LOVE of his God, and wishes meanwhile