th certainty or
determination.

361. Durand de Saint-Pourcain, among others, has indicated this clearly in
saying that contingent futurities are seen determinately in their causes,
and that God, who knows all, seeing all that shall have power to tempt or
repel the will, will see therein the course it shall take. I could cite
many other authors who have said the same thing, and reason does not allow
the possibility of thinking otherwise. M. Jacquelot implies also
(_Conformity of Faith with Reason_, p. 318 _et seqq._), as M. Bayle
observes (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 142, p.
796), that the dispositions of the human heart and those of circumstances
acquaint God unerringly with the choice that man shall make. M. Bayle [342]
adds that some Molinists say the same, and refers us to those who are
quoted in the _Suavis Concordia_ of Pierre de S. Joseph, the Feuillant (pp.
579, 580).

362. Those who have confused this determination with necessity have
fabricated monsters in order to fight them. To avoid a reasonable thing
which they had disguised under a hideous shape, they have fallen into great
absurdities. For fear of being obliged to admit an imaginary necessity, or
at least one different from that in question, they have admitted something
which happens without the existence of any cause or reason for it. This
amounts to the same as the absurd deviation of atoms, which according to
Epicurus happened without any cause. Cicero, in his book on Divination, saw
clearly that if the cause could produce an effect towards which it was
entirely indifferent there would be a true chance, a genuine luck, an
actual fortuitous case, that is, one which would be so not merely in
relation to us and our ignorance, according to which one may say:

_Sed Te_
_Nos facimus, Fortuna, Deam, caeloque locamus,_

but even in relation to God and to the nature of things. Consequently it
would be impossible to foresee events by judging of the future by the past.
He adds fittingly in the same passage: 'Qui potest provideri, quicquam
futurum esse, quod neque causam habet ullam, neque notam cur futurum sit?'
and soon after: 'Nihil est tam contrarium rationi et constantiae, quam
fortuna; ut mihi ne in Deum quidem cadere videatur, ut sciat quid casu et
fortuito futurum sit. Si enim scit, certe illud eveniet: sin certe eveniet,
nulla fortuna est.' If the future is certain, there is no such thing as