e is mention of the source of wrong
elections, which are error or ignorance, negligence, fickleness in changing
too readily, stubbornness in not changing in time, and bad habits; finally
there is the importunity of the appetites, which often drive us
inopportunely towards external things. The fifth section is designed to
reconcile evil elections or sins with the power and goodness of God; and
this section, as it is diffuse, is divided into sub-sections. The author
has cumbered himself needlessly with a great objection: for he asserts that
without a power to choose that is altogether indifferent in the choice
there would be no sin. Now it was very easy for God to refuse to creatures
a power so irrational. It was sufficient for them to be actuated by the
representations of goods and evils; it was therefore easy, according to the
author's hypothesis, for God to prevent sin. To extricate himself from this
difficulty, he has no other resource than to state that if this power [439]
were removed from things the world would be nothing but a purely passive
machine. But that is the very thing which I have disproved. If this power
were missing in the world (as in fact it is), one would hardly complain of
the fact. Souls will be well content with the representations of goods and
evils for the making of their choice, and the world will remain as
beautiful as it is. The author comes back to what he had already put
forward here, that without this power there would be no happiness. But I
have given a sufficient answer to that, and there is not the slightest
probability in this assertion and in certain other paradoxes he puts
forward here to support his principal paradox.

27. He makes a small digression on prayer (sub-sect. 4), saying that those
who pray to God hope for some change in the order of nature; but it seems
as though, according to his opinion, they are mistaken. In reality, men
will be content if their prayers are heard, without troubling themselves as
to whether the course of nature is changed in their favour, or not. Indeed,
if they receive succour from good angels there will be no change in the
general order of things. Also this opinion of our author is a very
reasonable one, that there is a system of spiritual substances, just as
there is of corporeal substances, and that the spiritual have communication
with one another, even as bodies do. God employs the ministry of angels in
his rule of mankind, without any detriment to