I know not whether there are also perchance persons who imagine that,
God being the absolute master of all things, one can thence infer that
everything outside him is indifferent to him, that he considers himself
alone, without concern for others, and that thus he has made some happy and
others unhappy without any cause, without choice, without reason. But to
teach so about God were to deprive him of wisdom and of goodness. We need
only observe that he considers himself and neglects nothing of what he owes
to himself, to conclude that he considers his creatures also, and that he
uses them in the manner most consistent with order. For the more a great
and good prince is mindful of his glory, the more he will think of making
his subjects happy, even though he were the most absolute of all monarchs,
and though his subjects were slaves from birth, bondsmen (in lawyers'
parlance), people entirely in subjection to arbitrary power. Calvin himself
and some others of the greatest defenders of the absolute decree rightly
maintained that God had _great and just reasons_ for his election and the
dispensation of his grace, although these reasons be unknown to us in
detail: and we must judge charitably that the most rigid predestinators
have too much reason and too much piety to depart from this opinion.

80. There will therefore be no argument for debate on that point (as I
hope) with people who are at all reasonable. But there will always be
argument among those who are called Universalists and Particularists,
according to what they teach of the grace and the will of God. Yet I am
somewhat inclined to believe that the heated dispute between them on the
will of God to save all men, and on that which depends upon it (when one
keeps separate the doctrine _de Auxiliis_, or of the assistance of grace),
rests rather in expressions than in things. For it is sufficient to
consider that God, as well as every wise and beneficent mind, is inclined
towards all possible good, and that this inclination is proportionate to
the excellence of the good. Moreover, this results (if we take the [166]
matter precisely and in itself) from an 'antecedent will', as it is termed,
which, however, is not always followed by its complete effect, because this
wise mind must have many other inclinations besides. Thus it is the result
of all the inclinations together that makes his will complete and
decretory, as I have already explained. One may therefore very w