to him. He was a
great anatomist and deeply versed in natural science; but he unfortunately
gave up research therein, and from being a great physicist he became a
mediocre theologian. He would almost listen to nothing more about the
marvels of Nature, and an express order from the Pope _in virtute sanctae
obedientiae_ was needed to extract from him the observations M. Thevenot
asked of him. He told us then that what had greatly helped towards inducing
him to place himself on the side of the Roman Church had been the voice of
a lady in Florence, who had cried out to him from a window: 'Go not on[179]
the side where you are about to go, sir, go on the other side.' 'That voice
struck me,' he told us, 'because I was just meditating upon religion.' This
lady knew that he was seeking a man in the house where she was, and, when
she saw him making his way to the other house, wished to point out where
his friend's room was.

101. Father John Davidius, the Jesuit, wrote a book entitled _Veridicus
Christianus_, which is like a kind of _Bibliomancy_, where one takes
passages at random, after the pattern of the _Tolle, lege_ of St.
Augustine, and it is like a devotional game. But the chances to which, in
spite of ourselves, we are subject, play only too large a part in what
brings salvation to men, or removes it from them. Let us imagine twin
Polish children, the one taken by the Tartars, sold to the Turks, brought
to apostasy, plunged in impiety, dying in despair; the other saved by some
chance, falling then into good hands to be educated properly, permeated by
the soundest truths of religion, exercised in the virtues that it commends
to us, dying with all the feelings of a good Christian. One will lament the
misfortune of the former, prevented perhaps by a slight circumstance from
being saved like his brother, and one will marvel that this slight chance
should have decided his fate for eternity.

102. Someone will perchance say that God foresaw by mediate knowledge that
the former would have been wicked and damned even if he had remained in
Poland. There are perhaps conjunctures wherein something of the kind takes
place. But will it therefore be said that this is a general rule, and that
not one of those who were damned amongst the pagans would have been saved
if he had been amongst Christians? Would that not be to contradict our
Lord, who said that Tyre and Sidon would have profited better by his
preaching, if they had had the g