ich God conveys
to it in creating it always. The limitations and imperfections arise
therein through the nature of the subject, which sets bounds to God's
production; this is the consequence of the original imperfection of
creatures. Vice and crime, on the other hand, arise there through the free
inward operation of the creature, in so far as this can occur within the
instant, repetition afterwards rendering it discernible.

389. This anteriority of nature is a commonplace in philosophy: thus one
says that the decrees of God have an order among themselves. When one
ascribes to God (and rightly so) understanding of the arguments and
conclusions of creatures, in such sort that all their demonstrations and
syllogisms are known to him, and are found in him in a transcendent way,
one sees that there is in the propositions or truths a natural order; but
there is no order of time or interval, to cause him to advance in knowledge
and pass from the premisses to the conclusion.

390. I find in the arguments that have just been quoted nothing which these
reflexions fail to satisfy. When God produces the thing he produces it as
an individual and not as a universal of logic (I admit); but he produces
its essence before its accidents, its nature before its operations,
following the priority of their nature, and _in signo anteriore rationis_.
Thus one sees how the creature can be the true cause of the sin, while
conservation by God does not prevent the sin; God disposes in accordance
with the preceding state of the same creature, in order to follow the laws
of his wisdom notwithstanding the sin, which in the first place will be
produced by the creature. But it is true that God would not in the
beginning have created the soul in a state wherein it would have sinned
from the first moment, as the Schoolmen have justly observed: for there is
nothing in the laws of his wisdom that could have induced him so to do.

391. This law of wisdom brings it about also that God reproduces the same
substance, the same soul. Such was the answer that could have been given by
the Abbe whom M. Bayle introduces in his _Dictionary_ (art. 'Pyrrhon.' lit.
B, p. 2432). This wisdom effects the connexion of things. I concede
therefore that the creature does not co-operate with God to conserve [359]
himself (in the sense in which I have just explained conservation). But I
see nothing to prevent the creature's co-operation with God for the
production of any othe