t all, at least in those that are bad,
it suffices, so it is said, to inculpate him and to render him the moral
cause that nothing comes to pass without his permission. To say nothing of
the fall of the angels, he knows all that which will come to pass, if,
having created man, he places him in such and such circumstances; and he
places him there notwithstanding. Man is exposed to a temptation to which
it is known that he will succumb, thereby causing an infinitude of
frightful evils, by which the whole human race will be infected and brought
as it were into a necessity of sinning, a state which is named 'original
sin'. Thus the world will be brought into a strange confusion, by this
means death and diseases being introduced, with a thousand other
misfortunes and miseries that in general afflict the good and the bad;
wickedness will even hold sway and virtue will be oppressed on earth, so
that it will scarce appear that a providence governs affairs. But it is
much worse when one considers the life to come, since but a small number of
men will be saved and since all the rest will perish eternally. Furthermore
these men destined for salvation will have been withdrawn from the corrupt
mass through an unreasoning election, whether it be said that God in
choosing them has had regard to their future actions, to their faith or to
their works, or one claim that he has been pleased to give them these good
qualities and these actions because he has predestined them to salvation.
For though it be said in the most lenient system that God wished to save
all men, and though in the other systems commonly accepted it be granted,
that he has made his Son take human nature upon him to expiate their sins,
so that all they who shall believe in him with a lively and final faith
shall be saved, it still remains true that this lively faith is a gift of
God; that we are dead to all good works; that even our will itself must be
aroused by a prevenient grace, and that God gives us the power to will and
to do. And whether that be done through a grace efficacious of itself, that
is to say, through a divine inward motion which wholly determines our [126]
will to the good that it does; or whether there be only a sufficient grace,
but such as does not fail to attain its end, and to become efficacious in
the inward and outward circumstances wherein the man is and has been placed
by God: one must return to the same conclusion that God is the final reason
o