The Morning exercise [at] Cri[ppleg]ate, or, Several cases of conscience practically resolved

The Manichees (as St. Austin tells who was himself for several years before his conversion of that heresy) thought that all the evil in the world sprang from an Almighty and an eternal principle of evil, ⟨p. 106⟩counter-working, and over-bearing God; whom they held the opposite eternal principle of goodness. But since the very formal notion of God, involveth infinite perfection, and that of sin, mere imperfection, it is a perfect contradiction, that evil should be infinite, if good be so; It were to make imperfection perfect, and mere impotency Omnipotent. Therefore there can be but one God, who is Almighty goodness. And as possible it is, that the Sun should darken the world by shining, as Almighty goodness should do any hurt in the world, or make any evil. God is the Author of all the good in the world, but sin and misery are of our making, Hos. 13.9.

The Manichees (as St. Austin tels who was himselfe for severall years before his conversion of that heresie) thought that all the evill in the world sprang from an Almighty and an eternall principle of evill, ⟨p. 106⟩counter-working, and over-bearing God; whom they held the opposite eternal principle of goodness. But since the very formall notion of God, involveth infinite perfection, and that of sin, meer imperfection, it is a perfect contradiction, that evill should be infinite, if good be so; It were to make imperfection perfect, and meer impotency Omnipotent. Therefore there can be but one God, who is Almighty goodnesse. And as possible it is, that the Sun should darken the world by shining, as Almighty goodness should do any hurt in the world, or make any evill. God is the Author of all the good in the world, but sin and misery are of our making, Hos. 13.9.

Much wiser than either of the two former, was the conjecture of the Pythagoreans and Platonists, though Heathens, who having nothing else to consult (as wanting the divine Revelation of holy Scripture) but their own faculties embraced the conceit, that all humane souls were created in the beginning upright, and placed by God in happier mansions, in purer and higher regions of the Universe, until at length they did [Greek or Hebrew] as Hierocles phraseth it, i. e. till they fell from the divine life, and became inhabitants of earthly Tabernacles, bringing their fallen and degenerate natures along with them. This opinion had of old the general consent of the Jews, as appeareth Jo. 9.2. and yet hath, as Men. Ben Israel in his Book De Resurrectione mortuorum, witnesseth. Among the Christians Origen is in the number of it's Sectaries, in his books [Greek or Hebrew], and some few of the Ancients.