e has the power. Now this consequent will, final and decisive,
results from the conflict of all the antecedent wills, of those which tend
towards good, even as of those which repel evil; and from the concurrence
of all these particular wills comes the total will. So in mechanics
compound movement results from all the tendencies that concur in one and
the same moving body, and satisfies each one equally, in so far as it is
possible to do all at one time. It is as if the moving body took equal
account of these tendencies, as I once showed in one of the Paris Journals
(7 Sept. 1693), when giving the general law of the compositions of
movement. In this sense also it may be said that the antecedent will is
efficacious in a sense and even effective with success.

23. Thence it follows that God wills _antecedently_ the good and
_consequently_ the best. And as for evil, God wills moral evil not at all,
and physical evil or suffering he does not will absolutely. Thus it is that
there is no absolute predestination to damnation; and one may say of
physical evil, that God wills it often as a penalty owing to guilt, and
often also as a means to an end, that is, to prevent greater evils or to
obtain greater good. The penalty serves also for amendment and example.
Evil often serves to make us savour good the more; sometimes too it
contributes to a greater perfection in him who suffers it, as the seed that
one sows is subject to a kind of corruption before it can germinate: this
is a beautiful similitude, which Jesus Christ himself used.

24. Concerning sin or moral evil, although it happens very often that it
may serve as a means of obtaining good or of preventing another evil, it is
not this that renders it a sufficient object of the divine will or a
legitimate object of a created will. It must only be admitted or
_permitted_ in so far as it is considered to be a certain consequence of an
indispensable duty: as for instance if a man who was determined not to
permit another's sin were to fail of his own duty, or as if an officer on
guard at an important post were to leave it, especially in time of danger,
in order to prevent a quarrel in the town between two soldiers of the
garrison who wanted to kill each other.

25. The rule which states, _non esse facienda mala, ut eveniant bona_, and
which even forbids the permission of a moral evil with the end of [138]
obtaining a physical good, far from being violated, is here proved, and i