that is what
is meant by the expression that they are not willed by a _particular_ and
direct _will_. There is no doubt that when God resolved to act outside
himself, he made choice of a manner of action which should be worthy [255]
of the supremely perfect Being, that is, which should be infinitely simple
and uniform, but yet of an infinite productivity. One may even suppose that
this manner of action by _general acts of will_ appeared to him
preferable--although there must thence result some superfluous events (and
even bad if they are taken separately, that is my own addition)--to another
manner more composed and more regular; such is Father Malebranche's
opinion. Nothing is more appropriate than this assumption (according to the
opinion of M. Bayle, when he wrote his _Divers Thoughts on the Comet_) to
solve a thousand difficulties which are brought up against divine
providence: 'To ask God', he says, 'why he has made things which serve to
render men more wicked, that would be to ask why God has carried out his
plan (which can only be of infinite beauty) by the simplest and most
uniform methods, and why, by a complexity of decrees that would unceasingly
cut across one another, he has not prevented the wrong use of man's free
will.' He adds 'that miracles being particular acts of will must have an
end worthy of God'.

205. On these foundations he makes some good reflexions (ch. 231)
concerning the injustice of those who complain of the prosperity of the
wicked. 'I shall have no scruples', he says, 'about saying that all those
who are surprised at the prosperity of the wicked have pondered very little
upon the nature of God, and that they have reduced the obligations of a
cause which directs all things, to the scope of a providence altogether
subordinate; and that is small-minded. What then! Should God, after having
made free causes and necessary causes, in a mixture infinitely well fitted
to show forth the wonders of his infinite wisdom, have established laws
consistent with the nature of free causes, but so lacking in firmness that
the slightest trouble that came upon a man would overthrow them entirely,
to the ruin of human freedom? A mere city governor will become an object of
ridicule if he changes his regulations and orders as often as someone is
pleased to murmur against him. And shall God, whose laws concern a good so
universal that all of the world that is visible to us perchance enters into
it as no more tha