tural disposition. Now that God should call forth
circumstances favourable to some and abandon others to experiences which
contribute to their misfortune, will not that give us cause for
astonishment? And it is not enough (so it seems) to say with some that
inward grace is universal and equal for all. For these same authors are
obliged to resort to the exclamations of St. Paul, and to say: 'O the
depth!' when they consider how men are distinguished by what we may call
outward graces, that is, by graces appearing in the diversity of
circumstances which God calls forth, whereof men are not the masters, and
which have nevertheless so great an influence upon all that concerns their
salvation.

Nor will it help us to say with St. Augustine that, all men being involved
in the damnation caused by the sin of Adam, God might have left them all in
their misery; and that thus his goodness alone induces him to deliver some
of them. For not only is it strange that the sin of another should condemn
anyone, but there still remains the question why God does not deliver
all--why he delivers the lesser number and why some in preference to
others. He is in truth their master, but he is a good and just master; his
power is absolute, but his wisdom permits not that he exercise that power
in an arbitrary and despotic way, which would be tyrannous indeed.

Moreover, the fall of the first man having happened only with God's
permission, and God having resolved to permit it only when once he had
considered its consequences, which are the corruption of the mass of the
human race and the choice of a small number of elect, with the abandonment
of all the rest, it is useless to conceal the difficulty by limiting one's
view to the mass already corrupt. One must, in spite of oneself, go back to
the knowledge of the consequences of the first sin, preceding the decree
whereby God permitted it, and whereby he permitted simultaneously that [61]
the damned should be involved in the mass of perdition and should not be
delivered: for God and the sage make no resolve without considering its
consequences.

I hope to remove all these difficulties. I will point out that absolute
necessity, which is called also logical and metaphysical and sometimes
geometrical, and which would alone be formidable in this connexion, does
not exist in free actions, and that thus freedom is exempt not only from
constraint but also from real necessity. I will show that God himself,