ologians claim that children receive in baptism a kind of faith,
although they do not remember it afterwards when they are questioned about
it, why should one maintain that nothing of a like nature, or even more
definite, could come about in the dying, whom we cannot interrogate after
their death? Thus there are countless paths open to God, giving him means
of satisfying his justice and his goodness: and the only thing one may
allege against this is that we know not what way he employs; which is far
from being a valid objection.

[178]
99. Let us pass on to those who lack not power to amend, but good will.
They are doubtless not to be excused; but there always remains a great
difficulty concerning God, since it rested with him to give them this same
good will. He is the master of wills, the hearts of kings and those of all
other men are in his hand. Holy Scripture goes so far as to say that God at
times hardened the wicked in order to display his power by punishing them.
This hardening is not to be taken as meaning that God inspires men with a
kind of anti-grace, that is, a kind of repugnance to good, or even an
inclination towards evil, just as the grace that he gives is an inclination
towards good. It is rather that God, having considered the sequence of
things that he established, found it fitting, for superior reasons, to
permit that Pharaoh, for example, should be in such _circumstances_ as
should increase his wickedness, and divine wisdom willed to derive a good
from this evil.

100. Thus it all often comes down to _circumstances_, which form a part of
the combination of things. There are countless examples of small
circumstances serving to convert or to pervert. Nothing is more widely
known than the _Tolle, lege_ (Take and read) cry which St. Augustine heard
in a neighbouring house, when he was pondering on what side he should take
among the Christians divided into sects, and saying to himself,

_Quod vitae sectabor iter?_

This brought him to open at random the book of the Holy Scriptures which he
had before him, and to read what came before his eyes: and these were words
which finally induced him to give up Manichaeism. The good Steno, a Dane,
who was titular Bishop of Titianopolis, Vicar Apostolic (as they say) of
Hanover and the region around, when there was a Duke Regent of his
religion, told us that something of that kind had happened