made between God and Tiberius, which is related at length by Andreas Caroli in his Memorabilia Ecclesiastica of the last century, as M. Bayle observes.  Bertius used it against the Gomarists.  I think that arguments of this kind are only valid against those who maintain that justice is an arbitrary thing in relation to God; or that he has a despotic power which can go so far as being able to condemn innocents; or, in short, that good is not the motive of his actions.

167.  At that same time an ingenious satire was composed against the Gomarists, entitled Fur praedestinatus, de gepredestineerdedief, wherein there is introduced a thief condemned to be hanged, who attributes to God all the evil he has done; who believes himself predestined to salvation notwithstanding his wicked actions; who imagines that this belief is sufficient for him, and who defeats by arguments ad hominem a Counter-remonstrant minister called to prepare him for death:  but this thief is finally converted by an old pastor who had been dismissed for his Arminianism, whom the gaoler, in pity for the criminal and for the weakness of the minister, had brought to him secretly.  Replies were made to this lampoon, but replies to satires never please as much as the satires themselves.  M. Bayle (Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, vol.  III, ch. 154, p. 938) says that this book was printed in England in the [228] time of Cromwell, and he appears not to have been informed that it was only a translation of the much older original Flemish.  He adds that Dr. George Kendal wrote a confutation of it at Oxford in the year 1657, under the title of Fur pro Tribunali, and that the dialogue is there inserted.  This dialogue presupposes, contrary to the truth, that the Counter-remonstrants make God the cause of evil, and teach a kind of predestination in the Mahometan manner according to which it does not matter whether one does good or evil, and the assumption that one is predestined assures the fact.  They by no means go so far.  Nevertheless it is true that there are among them some Supralapsarians and others who find it hard to declare themselves in clear terms upon the justice of God and the principles of piety and morals in man.  For they imagine despotism in God, and demand that man be convinced, without reason, of the absolute certainty of his election, a course that is liable to have dangerous consequences.  But all those who acknowledge that God produces the best plan, having chosen it from among all possible ideas of the universe; that he there finds man inclined by the original imperfection of creatures to misuse his free will and to plunge into misery; that God prevents the sin and the misery in so far as the perfection of the universe, which is an emanation from his, may permit it:  those, I say, show forth more clearly that God’s intention is the one most right and holy in the world; that the creature alone is guilty, that his original limitation or imperfection is the source of his wickedness, that his evil will is the sole cause of his misery; that one cannot be destined to salvation without also being destined to the holiness of the children of God, and that all hope of election one can have can only be founded upon the good will infused into one’s heart by the grace of God.