determine upon Adam, Peter, Judas
or any individual without the existence of a reason for this determination;
and this reason leads of necessity to some general enunciation. The wise
mind always acts _according to principles_; always _according to rules_,
and never _according to exceptions_, save when the rules come into
collision through opposing tendencies, where the strongest carries the day:
or else, either they will stop one another or some third course will emerge
as a result. In all these cases one rule serves as an exception to the
other, and there are never any _original exceptions_ with one who always
acts in a regular way.

338. If there are people who believe that election and reprobation are
accomplished on God's part by a despotic absolute power, not only without
any apparent reason but actually without any reason, even a concealed one,
they maintain an opinion that destroys alike the nature of things and the
divine perfections. Such an _absolutely absolute decree_ (so to speak)
would be without doubt insupportable. But Luther and Calvin were far from
such a belief: the former hopes that the life to come will make us
comprehend the just reasons of God's choice; and the latter protests
explicitly that these reasons are just and holy, although they be unknown
to us. I have already in that connexion quoted Calvin's treatise on
predestination, and here are the actual words: 'God before the fall of Adam
had reflected upon what he had to do, and that for causes concealed from
us.... It is evident therefore that he had just causes for the reprobation
of some of mankind, but causes to us UNKNOWN.'

339. This truth, that all God does is reasonable and cannot be better done,
strikes at the outset every man of good sense, and extorts, so to speak,
his approbation. And yet the most subtle of philosophers have a fatal
propensity for offending sometimes without observing it, during the course
and in the heat of disputes, against the first principles of good sense,
when these are shrouded in terms that disguise them. We have here [329]
already seen how the excellent M. Bayle, with all his shrewdness, has
nevertheless combated this principle which I have just indicated, and which
is a sure consequence of the supreme perfection of God. He thought to
defend in that way the cause of God and to exempt him from an imaginary
necessity, by leaving him the freedom to choose from among various goods
the least. I have already