ster of
State, a prince, are exceedingly lame, because it is well known what their
duties are and what can and ought to be the object of their cares: they
have scarce more than the one affair, and they often fail therein through
negligence or malice. God's object has in it something infinite, his cares
embrace the universe: what we know thereof is almost nothing, and we desire
to gauge his wisdom and his goodness by our knowledge. What temerity, or
rather what absurdity! The objections are on false assumptions; it is
senseless to pass judgement on the point of law when one does not know the
matter of fact. To say with St. Paul, _O altitudo divitiarum et
sapientiae,_ is not renouncing reason, it is rather employing the reasons
that we know, for they teach us that immensity of God whereof the Apostle
speaks. But therein we confess our ignorance of the facts, and we
acknowledge, moreover, before we see it, that God does all the best [207]
possible, in accordance with the infinite wisdom which guides his actions.
It is true that we have already before our eyes proofs and tests of this,
when we see something entire, some whole complete in itself, and isolated,
so to speak, among the works of God. Such a whole, shaped as it were by the
hand of God, is a plant, an animal, a man. We cannot wonder enough at the
beauty and the contrivance of its structure. But when we see some broken
bone, some piece of animal's flesh, some sprig of a plant, there appears to
be nothing but confusion, unless an excellent anatomist observe it: and
even he would recognize nothing therein if he had not before seen like
pieces attached to their whole. It is the same with the government of God:
that which we have been able to see hitherto is not a large enough piece
for recognition of the beauty and the order of the whole. Thus the very
nature of things implies that this order in the Divine City, which we see
not yet here on earth, should be an object of our faith, of our hope, of
our confidence in God. If there are any who think otherwise, so much the
worse for them, they are malcontents in the State of the greatest and the
best of all monarchs; and they are wrong not to take advantage of the
examples he has given them of his wisdom and his infinite goodness, whereby
he reveals himself as being not only wonderful, but also worthy of love
beyond all things.

135. I hope it will be found that nothing of what is comprised in the
nineteen maxims of M. Ba