t to be promoted to standing and to acquire wealth. The impious or
the evil can render services as well as the pious or good, indeed with
more fire, for they regard themselves in the use and their standing as
the use. As self-love mounts, therefore, the lust of doing service for
one's glory is fired. There is no such fire with the devout or good
unless it is kindled incidentally to their standing. Therefore the Lord
governs the impious at heart who have standing by their desire for a name
and arouses them to perform uses to the community or their country, their
society or city, and their fellow citizen or neighbor. With such persons
this is the Lord's government which is called divine providence, for the
Lord's kingdom is one of uses, and where only a few perform uses for
uses' sake providence brings it about that worshipers of self are raised
to higher offices, in which each is incited by his love to do good.

[4] Suppose an infernal kingdom in the world (though there is none) where
self-love alone rules, which is itself the devil, would not everyone
perform uses with the zeal of self-love and for the enhancement of his
glory more than in another kingdom? The public good is borne on the lips
of them all, but their own benefit in the heart. And as each relies on
what rules him in order to become greater, and aspires to be greatest,
how can he see that God exists? A smoke like that of a conflagration
envelops him through which no spiritual truth can pass with its light. I
have seen that smoke around the hells of such men. Light a lamp and
inquire how many in present-day kingdoms aspire to eminence who are not
loves of self and the world. Will you find fifty in a thousand who are
loves of God, among whom, moreover, only a few aspire to eminence? Since
so few are loves of God and so many are loves of self and the world and
since the latter perform more uses by their ardor, how can one confirm
himself against divine providence because the evil surpass the good in
eminence and opulence?

[5] This is borne out also by these words of the Lord:

The lord praised the unjust steward because he had acted prudently; for
the sons of this age are more prudent in their generation than the sons
of light in their generation. So I say to you, Make friends for
yourselves of the unjust mammon that when you fail they may receive you
into eternal habitations (Lu 16:8, 9).

The meaning in the sense of the letter is plain. But in the spiritu