"I. The cause of the transgression of Adam and Eve was neither God nor a decree of God, nor the withholding of any special grace, nor the permission to fall, nor any naturally incited motive, nor the providential government of the fall itself. It was not God, because He had most strictly forbidden the eating of the fruit of that tree. It was not his decree, because that carries only an immutable, not a coercive necessity, nor does it lead anyone to sin. It was not the withholding of some special grace by which man might have remained innocent, for there was no obligation to give even the grace that God did give man; he received, in fact, the ability to act as he willed, although not that of willing as he could. It was not any naturally incited motive, for a motive in itself is not sin. It was not the providential government of the fall, for to bring good out of evil is to be the source of good rather than of evil..…IV. Its antecedent cause was the will of man, which by itself was indifferent toward good and evil, but, when convinced by Satan, was turned toward evil." (Johannes Wollebius, Compendium of Christian Theology, Ch. 9, in Reformed Dogmatics: Seventeenth-Century Reformed Theology through the Writings of Wollebius, Voetius and Turretin, pgs. 48-49, 67)
"The principle cause was man himself in his abuse of free will, Eccl. 7:29. For he had received righteousness and grace by which he might have remained obedient, if he had so chosen. That righteousness and grace was not taken from him before he sinned, although strengthening and confirming grace by which the act of sinning might have been hindered and the act of obedience effected was not given him–and that by the certain, wise, and just counsel of God. God therefore was in no way the cause of his fall; neither did he lay upon man the necessity of sinning. Man of his own accord freely fell from God." (William Ames, The Marrow of Theology, Ch. 11)
"However because neither man nor Satan could have done anything without the providence of God, it remains to be seen how it was most holily occupied still without any causality of sin… not even the slightest taint of sin can be ascribed to Him, neither because He foreknew (because prescience [pre-knowledge] is not the cause of things, nor do things take place because they are foreknown; rather they are foreknown because they are to be); nor because He decreed (because He indeed decreed to permit, but not to effect); nor because He permitted the temptation (because He neither breathed into Satan the will to tempt, nor impelled him to it). He only permitted physically by not hindering (as bound by no law to furnish it), not morally by approval and consent....Hence it is evident that he [Adam] can well be said to have been able not to sin and yet not to be able not to sin. The former with respect to the habitual and internal grace of Adam and the powers bestowed upon him by creation (which were such that he had the power to obey the law given to him provided only he had wished to make a good use of them); the latter by reason of the decree and the suspension of actual external grace (or of the divine concurrence without which no action could be performed by him). It was therefore possible for Adam not to sin in the divided sense and with regard to himself, but it was impossible in the compound sense, when viewed in relation to God’s decree and the permission of sin and the denial of grace." (Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, Vol. 1, Topic IX, Q. 7)
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