 2. Arnauld held that freedom of human volitions is incompatible with the determination of the choices by laws of nature together with temporally antecedent events. Thus he responds to Malebranche’s statement that the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans some seventy years after the death of Jesus was “a necessary outcome of the laws of nature,” by saying, “It is clear … that a long series of diverse events, that depended on an infinity of free movements of the wills of men, could have been, and indeed were, regulated by the providence of Him who has an almighty power to move the hearts of men, and to direct them as He pleases … But it cannot be said that it was a necessary consequence of the laws of nature without degrading human beings, making them act like lower animals, and depriving them of their liberty, a position that has been declared anathema by the Council of Trent” (OA, 39:301). He repeats the criticism a few pages later: