CHANCE is also used for the manner of deciding things, the conduct or direction whereof is left at large, and not reducible to any determinate rules or measures; or where there is no ground for preference: as at cards, dice, lotteries, &c.
For the Laws of CHANCE, or the Proportion of Hazard in Gaming. See GAME.
The ancient sorts or chance, M. Placette observes, was instituted by God himself; and in the Old Testament we find several standing laws and express commands which prescribed its use on certain occasions: hence, the scripture says, "The lot, or chance, fell on Matthias," when it was in question who should fill Judas's place in the apostolate.
Hence also arose the sortes sanctorum; or method of determining things, among the ancient Christians, by opening some of the sacred books, and pitching on the first verse they cast their eye on, as a sure prognostic of what was to befall them. The sortes Homericæ, Virgilianæ, Prænestinæ, &c. used by the heathens, were with the same view, and in the same manner. See SORTES.
St. Augustin seems to approve of this method of determining things future, and owns that he had practised it himself; grounded on this supposition, that God presides over chance; and on Prov. xvi. 33.
Many among the modern divines hold chance to be conducted in a particular manner by providence; and esteem it an extraordinary way which God uses to declare his will, and a kind of immediate revelation.