Such are the providential events of Mr. Hogancamp's "second life".
The rest of the eight paintings, one of which shows the signing of the Declaration of Independence, illustrate "providential events," McDowell had declared — meaning there was divine oversight.
Shippey says that this demonstrates the value of persistence in the face of despair, even if a way out cannot be seen; Kocher and Helms write that it is part of a pattern of providential events and of the reversed effects of evil intentions throughout the book.
Religion always impinges on Mantel's fiction, but not because, like those Catholic converts Muriel Spark and Graham Greene whom she has diligently read, she uses it to detect any providential shape to events.
They similarly rejected the inspiration of the prophetic books of the Bible, as well as the Pharisaic beliefs in angels, rewards and punishments in the world to come, providential governance of human events, and resurrection of the dead.
Equally providential is the result, as this style works well on most men; think Jude Law in The Talented Mr Ripley.
Sometimes, the timing of events seems almost providential.
Crane's description of the Discovery's escape from being locked in the ice faithfully reflects Scott's own version of events, in which a providential "Great Swell" of wind and tide was almost entirely responsible for breaking up the miles of sheet ice between the ship and open water.
Consequently, virtues and vices, along with the praise and blame which accompany them, are reduced to natural events, inscribed within the providential order of fate.
Finally, a third response would involve claiming that in cases of apparently effective prayer, God is not really responding to the prayer but instead bringing about events as part of a providential plan, a plan that includes both the prayer and the apparent answer to it.
The doctrine of divine providence also makes it immediately clear what the answer to the second question has to be: the past cannot be changed because the past events are immutably present in the divine providential plan which is immutable (607A).
