we must revert to the expedient that I have employed more
than once, which states that God, before decreeing anything, considered
among other possible sequences of things that one which he afterwards
approved. In the idea of this is represented how the first parents sin and
corrupt their posterity; how Jesus Christ redeems the human race; how some,
aided by such and such graces, attain to final faith and to salvation; and
how others, with or without such or other graces, do not attain thereto,
continue in sin, and are damned. God grants his sanction to this sequence
only after having entered into all its detail, and thus pronounces nothing
final as to those who shall be saved or damned without having pondered upon
everything and compared it with other possible sequences. Thus God's
pronouncement concerns the whole sequence at the same time; he simply
decrees its existence. In order to save other men, or in a different way,
he must needs choose an altogether different sequence, seeing that all is
connected in each sequence. In this conception of the matter, which is that
most worthy of the All-wise, all whose actions are connected together to
the highest possible degree, there would be only one total decree, which is
to create such a world. This total decree comprises equally all the
particular decrees, without setting one of them before or after another.
Yet one may say also that each particular act of antecedent will entering
into the total result has its value and order, in proportion to the good
whereto this act inclines. But these acts of antecedent will are not called
decrees, since they are not yet inevitable, the outcome depending upon the
total result. According to this conception of things, all the difficulties
that can here be made amount to the same as those I have already stated and
removed in my inquiry concerning the origin of evil.

85. There remains only one important matter of discussion, which has its
peculiar difficulties. It is that of the dispensation of the means and
circumstances contributing to salvation and to damnation. This comprises
amongst others the subject of the Aids of Grace (_de auxiliis gratiae_), on
which Rome (since the Congregation _de Auxiliis_ under Clement VIII, when a
debate took place between the Dominicans and the Jesuits) does not readily
permit books to be published. Everyone must agree that God is [169]
altogether good and just, that his goodness makes him contribute