rtant to meet than those given earlier,
since it causes more trouble to those who judge goods and evils by
considerations founded on the purest and most lofty maxims. This is that
God being the supreme wisdom and goodness, it seems to them that he ought
to do all things as wise and virtuous persons would wish them to be done,
following the rules of wisdom and of goodness which God has imprinted in
them, and as they would be obliged themselves to do these things if they
depended upon them. Thus, seeing that the affairs of the world do not go so
well as, in their opinion, they might go, and as they would go if they
interfered themselves, they conclude that God, who is infinitely better and
wiser than they, or rather wisdom and goodness itself, does not concern
himself with these affairs.'

198. M. Diroys makes some apt remarks concerning this, which I will not
repeat, since I have sufficiently answered the objection in more than one
passage, and that has been the chief end of all my discourse. But he makes
one assertion with which I cannot agree. He claims that the objection
proves too much. One must again quote his own words with M. Bayle, p. 1059:
'If it does not behove the supreme Wisdom and Goodness to fail to do what
is best and most perfect, it follows that all Beings are eternally,
immutably and essentially as perfect and as good as they can be, since
nothing can change except by passing either from a state less good to a
better, or from a better to a less good. Now that cannot happen if it does
not behove God to fail to do that which is best and most perfect, when he
can do it. It will therefore be necessary that all beings be eternally and
essentially filled with a knowledge and a virtue as perfect as God can give
them. Now all that which is eternally and essentially as perfect as God can
make it proceeds essentially from him; in a word, is eternally and
essentially good as he is, and consequently it is God, as he is. That is
the bearing of this maxim, that it is repugnant to supreme justice and
goodness not to make things as good and perfect as they can be. For it is
essential to essential wisdom and goodness to banish all that is repugnant
to it altogether. One must therefore assert as a primary truth concerning
the conduct of God in relation to creatures that there is nothing repugnant
to this goodness and this wisdom in making things less perfect than [251]
they could be, or in permitting the goods that it ha