for his greater happiness, that He would never endow anyone with so much
wisdom in time to come; this would in no wise have increased Solomon's
intellect, and the wise king would have given equal thanks to the Lord if
everyone had been gifted with the same faculties.

(9) Still, though we assert that Moses, in the passages of the Pentateuch
just cited, spoke only according to the understanding of the Hebrews, we
have no wish to deny that God ordained the Mosaic law for them alone, nor
that He spoke to them alone, nor that they witnessed marvels beyond those
which happened to any other nation; but we wish to emphasize that
Moses desired to admonish the Hebrews in such a manner, and with such
reasonings as would appeal most forcibly to their childish understanding,
and constrain them to worship the Deity. (10) Further, we wished to show
that the Hebrews did not surpass other nations in knowledge, or in piety,
but evidently in some attribute different from these; or (to speak like the
Scriptures, according to their understanding), that the Hebrews were not
chosen by God before others for the sake of the true life and sublime ideas,
though they were often thereto admonished, but with some other object. (11)
What that object was, I will duly show.

(12) But before I begin, I wish in a few words to explain what I mean by the
guidance of God, by the help of God, external and inward, and, lastly, what
I understand by fortune.

(13) By the help of God, I mean the fixed and unchangeable order of nature
or the chain of natural events: for I have said before and shown elsewhere
that the universal laws of nature, according to which all things exist and
are determined, are only another name for the eternal decrees of God, which
always involve eternal truth and necessity.