those possessed of great authority with the soldiers:  a Braccio, a Sforza, a Wallenstein.  He lacks money for the most pressing needs, it is necessary to turn to great financiers, who have an established credit, and he must at the same time connive at their malversations.  It is true that this unfortunate necessity arises most often from previous errors.  It is not the same with God:  he has need of no man, he commits no error, he always does the best.  One cannot even wish that things may go better, when one understands them:  and it would be a vice in the Author of things if he wished to change anything whatsoever in them, if he wished to exclude the vice that was found there.  Is this State with perfect government, where good is willed and performed as far as it is possible, where evil even serves the greatest good, comparable with the State of a prince whose affairs are in ruin and who escapes as best he can?  Or with that of a prince who encourages oppression in order to punish it, and who delights to see the little men with begging bowls and the great on scaffolds?

126.  XI.  ’A ruler devoted to the interests of virtue, and to the good of his subjects, takes the utmost care to ensure that they never disobey his laws; and if he must needs chastise them for their disobedience, he sees to it that the penalty cures them of the inclination to evil, and restores in their soul a strong and constant tendency towards good:  so far is he from any desire that the penalty for the error should incline them more and more towards evil.’

[200] To make men better, God does all that is due, and even all that can be done on his side without detriment to what is due.  The most usual aim of punishment is amendment; but it is not the sole aim, nor that which God always intends.  I have said a word on that above.  Original sin, which disposes men towards evil, is not merely a penalty for the first sin; it is a natural consequence thereof.  On that too a word has been said, in the course of an observation on the fourth theological proposition.  It is like drunkenness, which is a penalty for excess in drinking and is at the same time a natural consequence that easily leads to new sins.

127.  XII.  ’To permit the evil that one could prevent is not to care whether it be committed or not, or is even to wish that it be committed.’

By no means.  How many times do men permit evils which they could prevent if they turned all their efforts in that direction?  But other more important cares prevent them from doing so.  One will rarely resolve upon adjusting irregularities in the coinage while one is involved in a great war.  And the action of an English Parliament in this direction a little before the Peace of Ryswyck will be rather praised than imitated.  Can one conclude from this that the State has no anxiety about this irregularity, or even that it desires it?  God has a far stronger reason, and one far more worthy of him, for tolerating evils.  Not only does he derive from them greater goods, but he finds them connected with the greatest goods of all those that are possible:  so that it would be a fault not to permit them.