some great disturbance.  In this case, therefore, one may say that the prince does not will the duel:  he knows of it, but he permits it notwithstanding, for he prefers permitting the sin of others to committing one himself.  Thus this corrected comparison may serve, provided that one observe the difference between God and the prince.  The prince is forced into this permission by his powerlessness; a more powerful monarch would have no need of all these considerations; but God, who has power to do all that is possible, only permits sin because it is absolutely impossible to anyone at all to do better.  The prince’s action is peradventure not free from sorrow and regret.  This regret is due to his imperfection, of which he is sensible; therein lies displeasure.  God is incapable of such a feeling and finds, moreover, no cause therefor; he is infinitely conscious of his own perfection, and it may even be said that the imperfection in creatures taken individually changes for him into perfection in relation to the whole, and that it is an added glory for the Creator.  What more can one wish, when one possesses a boundless wisdom and when one is as powerful as one is wise; when one can do all and when one has the best?

166.  Having once understood these things, we are hardened sufficiently, so it seems to me, against the strongest and most spirited objections.  I have not concealed them:  but there are some we shall merely touch upon, because they are too odious.  The Remonstrants and M. Bayle (Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, vol.  III, ch. 152, end page 919) quote St. Augustine, saying, ’crudelem esse misericordiam velle aliquem miserum esse ut eius miserearis’:  in the same sense is cited Seneca De Benef., L. 6, c. 36, 37.  I confess that one would have some reason to urge that against those who believed that God has no other cause for permitting sin than the [227] design to have something wherewith to exercise punitive justice against the majority of men, and his mercy towards a small number of elect.  But it must be considered that God had reasons for his permission of sin, more worthy of him and more profound in relation to us.  Someone has dared to compare God’s course of action with that of a Caligula, who has his edicts written in so small a hand and has them placarded in so high a place that it is not possible to read them; with that of a mother who neglects her daughter’s honour in order to attain her own selfish ends; with that of Queen Catherine de Medicis, who is said to have abetted the love-affairs of her ladies in order to learn of the intrigues of the great; and even with that of Tiberius, who arranged, through the extraordinary services of the executioner, that the law forbidding the subjection of a virgin to capital punishment should no longer apply to the case of Sejanus’s daughter.  This last comparison was proposed by Peter Bertius, then an Armenian, but finally a member of the Roman communion.  And a scandalous comparison has been