forestall some new objections. I have explained, for
instance, why I have taken the antecedent and consequent will as
preliminary and final, after the example of Thomas, of Scotus and others;
how it is possible that there be incomparably more good in the glory of all
the saved than there is evil in the misery of all the damned, despite [71]
that there are more of the latter; how, in saying that evil has been
permitted as a _conditio sine qua non_ of good, I mean not according to the
principle of necessity, but according to the principle of the fitness of
things. Furthermore I show that the predetermination I admit is such as
always to predispose, but never to necessitate, and that God will not
refuse the requisite new light to those who have made a good use of that
which they had. Other elucidations besides I have endeavoured to give on
some difficulties which have been put before me of late. I have, moreover,
followed the advice of some friends who thought it fitting that I should
add two appendices: the one treats of the controversy carried on between
Mr. Hobbes and Bishop Bramhall touching Freedom and Necessity, the other of
the learned work on _The Origin of Evil_, published a short time ago in
England.

Finally I have endeavoured in all things to consider edification: and if I
have conceded something to curiosity, it is because I thought it necessary
to relieve a subject whose seriousness may cause discouragement. It is with
that in view that I have introduced into this dissertation the pleasing
chimera of a certain astronomical theology, having no ground for
apprehension that it will ensnare anyone and deeming that to tell it and
refute it is the same thing. Fiction for fiction, instead of imagining that
the planets were suns, one might conceive that they were masses melted in
the sun and thrown out, and that would destroy the foundation of this
hypothetical theology. The ancient error of the two principles, which the
Orientals distinguished by the names Oromasdes and Arimanius, caused me to
explain a conjecture on the primitive history of peoples. It appears indeed
probable that these were the names of two great contemporary princes, the
one monarch of a part of upper Asia, where there have since been others of
this name, the other king of the Scythian Celts who made incursions into
the states of the former, and who was also named amongst the divinities of
Germania. It seems, indeed, that Zoroaster used the names