128.  XIII.  ’It is a very great fault in those who govern, if they do not care whether there be disorder in their States or not.  The fault is still greater if they wish and even desire disorder there.  If by hidden and indirect, but infallible, ways they stirred up a sedition in their States to bring them to the brink of ruin, in order to gain for themselves the glory of showing that they have the courage and the prudence necessary for saving a great kingdom on the point of perishing, they would be most deserving of condemnation.  But if they stirred up this sedition because there were no other means than that, of averting the total ruin of their subjects and of strengthening on new foundations, and for several centuries, the happiness of nations, one must needs lament the unfortunate necessity (see above, pp. 146, 147, what has been said of the force of[201] necessity) to which they were reduced, and praise them for the use that they made thereof.’

This maxim, with divers others set forth here, is not applicable to the government of God.  Not to mention the fact that it is only the disorders of a very small part of his kingdom which are brought up in objection, it is untrue that he has no anxiety about evils, that he desires them, that he brings them into being, to have the glory of allaying them.  God wills order and good; but it happens sometimes that what is disorder in the part is order in the whole.  I have already stated this legal axiom:  Incivile est nisi tota lege inspecta judicare.  The permission of evils comes from a kind of moral necessity:  God is constrained to this by his wisdom and by his goodness; this necessity is happy, whereas that of the prince spoken of in the maxim is unhappy.  His State is one of the most corrupt; and the government of God is the best State possible.

129.  XIV.  ’The permission of a certain evil is only excusable when one cannot remedy it without introducing a greater evil; but it cannot be excusable in those who have in hand a remedy more efficacious against this evil, and against all the other evils that could spring from the suppression of this one.’

The maxim is true, but it cannot be brought forward against the government of God.  Supreme reason constrains him to permit the evil.  If God chose what would not be the best absolutely and in all, that would be a greater evil than all the individual evils which he could prevent by this means.  This wrong choice would destroy his wisdom and his goodness.

130.  XV.  ’The Being infinitely powerful, Creator of matter and of spirits, makes whatever he wills of this matter and these spirits.  There is no situation or shape that he cannot communicate to spirits.  If he then permitted a physical or a moral evil, this would not be for the reason that otherwise some other still greater physical or moral evil would be altogether inevitable.  None of those reasons for the mixture of good and evil which are founded on the limitation of the forces of benefactors can apply to him.’