98.  This digression appeared to me to be seasonable, because that writer deserves to be more widely known.  Returning now to the subject I make a further observation.  Supposing that to-day a knowledge of Jesus Christ according to the flesh is absolutely necessary to salvation, as indeed it is safest to teach, it will be possible to say that God will give that knowledge to all those who do, humanly speaking, that which in them lies, even though God must needs give it by a miracle.  Moreover, we cannot know what passes in souls at the point of death; and if sundry learned and serious theologians 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?