Providence is the type of things ordered to their end preexisting in the divine mind; government is the execution of providence by directing things to their end, or to their proximate ends and through these to the ultimate end. Therefore it is the action by which God carries out the order of things known and determined from eternity. To that government pertains, besides creation, also the conservation of things and their movement to their end. Now just that movement will be considered.

There is such government. By His providence God watches over and governs all things that He made, reaching from end to end with might and disposing all things with gentleness.

The supreme ruler of the world is the one God.

God Himself alone however governs the world, inasmuch as He alone has the type of the order of all things, even the smallest, to their end, and inasmuch as it depends on Him alone that that type is efficaciously accomplished. The divine government reaches as far as the divine causality which certainly touches all things in both their being and their activity. But He established that government hierarchically in such a way that He does not always carry it out alone, but He accomplishes it also through other agents. In the natural order He alone governs the highest creatures subject to the one God, but in the order of grace He governs all, inasmuch as He alone confers on them supernatural graces.

Divine government is infallible, like Providence itself of which it is the execution.

Since God is the universal cause disposing and governing everything, nothing can happen outside the order of divine government, but it can happen outside the order of some particular cause. Therefore with regard to God nothing is accidental or fortuitous in the world, but such a thing can happen with regard to a secondary cause.