Since primitive organization, sex, age, constitution, education, climate, form of government, religion, prejudices, superstitions, &c. exercise the most decided influence over our sensations and ideas, our judgments and the determination of our will, the nature and force of our propensities and talents, consequently over the first motives of our actions, it must be confessed that man, in several of the most important moments of his life, is under the empire of a destiny, which sometimes fixes him like the inert shell against a rock; at others, it carries him away in a whirlwind, like the dust. It is not then surprising that the sages of Greece, of the Indies, China and Japan, the Christians of the east and west, and the Mahomedans, have worked up this species of fatalism with their different doctrines. In all times our moral and intellectual faculties have been made to take their origin from God; and in all times it has been taught that all the gifts of men came from heaven; that God has, from all eternity, chosen the elect; that man of himself is incapable of any good thought; that every difference between men, relative to their faculties, comes from God; that there are only those to whom it has been given by a superior power who are capable of certain actions; that every one acts after his own innate character, the same as the fig tree does not bear grapes, nor the vine figs, and the same that a salt spring does not run in fresh water; lastly, that all cannot dive into the mysteries of nature, nor the decrees of Providence. It is this same kind of fatalism, this same inevitable influence of superior powers, that has been taught by the fathers of the church. St. Augustine wished this very same doctrine to be preached, to profess loudly in the belief of the infallibility of Providence, and our entire dependence upon God. “In the same manner, he says, no one can give himself life, no one can give himself understanding.” If some are unacquainted with the truth, it is, according to his doctrine, because they have not received the necessary capacity to know it. He refutes the objections that might be urged against the justice of God: he remarks that neither has the grace of God distributed equally to every one the temporal goods, such as address, strength, health, beauty, wit, and the disposition for the arts and sciences, riches, honors, &c. St. Cyprian at that time had already said, that we ought not to be proud of our qualities, for we possess nothing from ourselves.