. They
confuse moral necessity with metaphysical necessity: they imagine that
since God cannot help acting for the best he is thus deprived of freedom,
and things are endued with that necessity which philosophers and
theologians endeavour to avoid. With these writers my dispute is only one
of words, provided they admit in very deed that God chooses and does the
best. But there are others who go further, they think that God could have
done better. This is an opinion which must be rejected: for although it
does not altogether deprive God of wisdom and goodness, as do the advocates
of blind necessity, it sets bounds thereto, thus derogating from God's
supreme perfection.

169. The question of the _possibility of things that do not happen_ has
already been examined by the ancients. It appears that Epicurus, to
preserve freedom and to avoid an absolute necessity, maintained, after
Aristotle, that contingent futurities were not susceptible of determinate
truth. For if it was true yesterday that I should write to-day, it could
therefore not fail to happen, it was already necessary; and, for the same
reason, it was from all eternity. Thus all that which happens is necessary,
and it is impossible for anything different to come to pass. But since that
is not so it would follow, according to him, that contingent futurities
have no determinate truth. To uphold this opinion, Epicurus went so far as
to deny the first and the greatest principle of the truths of reason, he
denied that every assertion was either true or false. Here is the way they
confounded him: 'You deny that it was true yesterday that I should write
to-day; it was therefore false.' The good man, not being able to admit this
conclusion, was obliged to say that it was neither true nor false. After
that, he needs no refutation, and Chrysippus might have spared himself the
trouble he took to prove the great principle of contradictories, following
the account by Cicero in his book _De Fato_: 'Contendit omnes nervos
Chrysippus ut persuadeat omne [Greek: Axioma] aut verum esse aut falsum. Ut
enim Epicurus veretur ne si hoc concesserit, concedendum sit, fato fieri
quaecunque fiant; si enim alterum ex aeternitate verum sit, esse id etiam
certum; si certum, etiam necessarium; ita et necessitatem et fatum
confirmari putat; sic Chrysippus metuit ne non, si non obtinuerit omne[230]
quod enuncietur aut verum esse aut falsum, omnia fato fieri possint ex
causis aeternis rerum futurar