 But there are passages in Descartes’ corpus that make a surface reading of the Fourth Meditation problematic. One is of course the Principles I.40–41 text in which Descartes says that God pre-ordains everything from eternity. He does admit that “we can easily get ourselves into great difficulties if we attempt to reconcile this divine preordination with the freedom of our will, or attempt to grasp both these things at once” (AT 8A:20, CSM 1:206). But this just means that he himself appreciates the problem.