We don’t trust in the Providence of God enough
God prepared efficacious means, and the connection of causes, so that one predestined may die ineffably in grace, and be saved; but many times a casual death, or an unlooked-for suffocation in a river, is a means, according to the order of divine providence, necessary for the predestined to die in grace, according to that of Wisdom 4: He wastaken away, lest wickedness should alter his understanding. Therefore God by efficacious will prepared the connection of secondary causes so that the predestined man at such a time would be suffocated in a river, or be snatched away by an untimely death.
therefore it is impossible that any effect should come to be in the nature of things which is not willed by divine providence and ordained to some end.
To the first argument it is answered that, as St. Thomas teaches in 1st part, question 19, article 9, the evil of punishment, speaking formally, is not willed by God, because under the aspect of evil it is not desirable; but insofar as it is joined
with a good which God directly wills, and in this way, by willing the good of His justice and mercy, He wills to inflict the evil of punishment upon the sinner; nor does this conflict with the divine mercy and clemency. God, therefore, did not
principally create man to this end, that he be suffocated in a river; but He created the predestined man principally so that in him He might show His mercy, and that he might efficaciously attain eternal life; and that he might arrive at it, He decreed that the one swimming in the river be suffocated while he was in grace.
But if he was a reprobate, existing in mortal sin, He also prepared the connection of secondary causes so that he be suffocated in the waters, and He does this according to the right order of His providence: first, lest, coming after [i.e., living
on], he commit greater crimes, in which also His mercy shines forth; second, that He might show His justice in his punishment; third, for the greater caution of the just, that they may learn to fear God; fourth, that His mercy may shine forth the
more in the elect.
-Diego Alvarez O.P disputation 29