OF THE PLAGUE.

the author of the pestilence, through which He executes that which He threatened to the impenitent world through the Prophets.

However, it is objected to us, and not without bitterness, by those who blame contagion, that although they designate the corruption of the air as the cause of the pestilence, they do not therefore exclude the hand or providence of God, by which even the contagion itself, the whole air, and all men are governed, but that what God does, He executes through secondary and natural causes. Is the question therefore whether God sends the pestilence through secondary and natural causes, and when they boldly affirm that He sends it through them, is it necessary that it be only through them? This is acknowledged among all Christians, that God effects some things without intermediate causes, but some through intermediate causes; and as Dr. Augustine original: "D. Augustinus" piously teaches, through these He only ordains some things, some He works, and others He both ordains and works. Moreover, we do not believe any Christian comes to such madness as to think, like the Stoics of old, that God necessarily acts always through means. For in exacting punishments, it is certainly agreed that one must not prescribe to God that He must act through organic natural causes: He inflicts punishments by an immutable decree of counsel when He wills, to whom He wills, as He wills, or by His own hand immediately, or mediately through angels or some natural causes. There is great precipitation among those who profess not the doctrines of philosophers, but the rules of Scripture and the Christian faith, to profess clearly and openly that God does not inflict the pestilence except through natural causes. A double error is born here: first, that