it in a good sense,
which is not contrary to freedom: _fatum_ comes from _fari_, to speak, to
pronounce; it signifies a judgement, a decree of God, the award of his
wisdom. To say that one cannot do a thing, simply because one does not will
it, is to misuse terms. The wise mind wills only the good: is it then a
servitude when the will acts in accordance with wisdom? And can one be less
a slave than to act by one's own choice in accordance with the most perfect
reason? Aristotle used to say that that man is in a natural servitude
(_natura servus_) who lacks guidance, who has need of being directed.
Slavery comes from without, it leads to that which offends, and especially
to that which offends with reason: the force of others and our own passions
enslave us. God is never moved by anything outside himself, nor is he
subject to inward passions, and he is never led to that which can cause him
offence. It appears, therefore, that M. Bayle gives odious names to the
best things in the world, and turns our ideas upside-down, applying the
term slavery to the state of the greatest and most perfect freedom.

229. He had also said not long before (ch. 151, p. 891): 'If virtue, or any
other good at all, had been as appropriate as vice for the Creator's ends,
vice would not have been given preference; it must therefore have been the
only means that the Creator could have used; it was therefore employed
purely of necessity. As therefore he loves his glory, not with a freedom of
indifference, but by necessity, he must by necessity love all the means
without which he could not manifest his glory. Now if vice, as vice, was
the only means of attaining to this end, it will follow that God of
necessity loves vice as vice, a thought which can only inspire us with
horror; and he has revealed quite the contrary to us.' He observes at the
same time that certain doctors among the Supralapsarians (like Rutherford,
for example) denied that God wills sin as sin, whilst they admitted [270]
that he wills sin permissively in so far as it is punishable and
pardonable. But he urges in objection, that an action is only punishable
and pardonable in so far as it is vicious.

230. M. Bayle makes a false assumption in these words that we have just
read, and draws from them false conclusions. It is not true that God loves
his glory by necessity, if thereby it is understood that he is led by
necessity to acquire his glory through his creatures. For if that w