§104It is true that there are reasons for God's choice, and the consideration of the object, that is, the nature of man, must needs enter therein; but it does not seem that this choice can be subjected to a rule such as we are capable of conceiving, and such as may flatter the pride of men. Some famous theologians believe that God offers more grace, and in a more favourable way, to those whose resistance he foresees will be less, and that he abandons the rest to their self-will. We may readily suppose that this is often the case, and this expedient, among those which make man distinguishable by anything favourable in his nature, is the farthest removed from Pelagianism. But I would not venture, notwithstanding, to make of it a universal rule. Moreover, that we may not have cause to vaunt ourselves, it is necessary that we be ignorant of the reasons for God's choice. Those reasons are too diverse to become known to us; and it may be that God at times shows the power of his grace by overcoming the most obstinate resistance, to the end that none may have cause either to despair or to be puffed up. St. Paul, as it would seem, had this in mind when he offered himself as an example. God, he said, has had mercy upon me, to give a great example of his patience.

§105It may be that fundamentally all men are equally bad, and consequently incapable of being distinguished the one from the other through their good or less bad natural qualities; but they are not bad all in the same way: for there is an inherent individual difference between souls, as the Pre-established Harmony proves. Some are more or less inclined towards a particular good or a particular evil, or towards their opposites, all in accordance with their natural dispositions. But since the general plan of the universe, chosen by God for superior reasons, causes men to be in different circumstances, those who meet with such as are more [181] favourable to their nature will become more readily the least wicked, the most virtuous, the most happy; yet it will be always by aid of the influence of that inward grace which God unites with the circumstances. Sometimes it even comes to pass, in the progress of human life, that a more excellent nature succeeds less, for lack of cultivation or opportunities. One may say that men are chosen and ranged not so much according to their excellence as according to their conformity with God's plan. Even so it may occur that a stone of lesser quality is made use of in a building or in a group because it proves to be the particular one for filling a certain gap.

§106But, in fine, all these attempts to find reasons, where there is no need to adhere altogether to certain hypotheses, serve only to make clear to us that there are a thousand ways of justifying the conduct of God. All the disadvantages we see, all the obstacles we meet with, all the difficulties one may raise for oneself, are no hindrance to a belief founded on reason, even when it cannot stand on conclusive proof, as has been shown and will later become more apparent, that there is nothing so exalted as the wisdom of God, nothing so just as his judgements, nothing so pure as his holiness, and nothing more vast than his goodness.

[182] * * * * *

ESSAYS ON THE JUSTICE OF GOD AND THE FREEDOM OF MAN IN THE ORIGIN OF EVIL

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PART TWO

§107Hitherto I have devoted myself to giving a full and clear exposition of this whole subject: and although I have not yet spoken of M. Bayle's objections in particular, I have endeavoured to anticipate them, and to suggest ways of answering them. But as I have taken upon myself the task of meeting them in detail, not only because there will perhaps still be passages calling for elucidation, but also because his arguments are usually full of wit and erudition, and serve to throw greater light on this controversy, it will be well to give an account of the chief objections that are dispersed through his works, and to add my answers. At the beginning I observed 'that God co-operates in moral evil, and in physical evil, and in each of them both morally and physically; and that man co-operates therein also morally and physically in a free and active way, becoming in consequence subject to blame and punishment'. I have shown also that each point has its own difficulty; but the greatest of these lies in maintaining that God co-operates morally in moral evil, that is, in sin, without being the originator of the sin, and even without being accessary thereto.

§108He does this by permitting it justly, and by directing it wisely towards the good, as I have shown in a manner that appears tolerably intelligible. But as it is here principally that M. Bayle undertakes [183] to discomfit those who maintain that there is nothing in faith which cannot be harmonized with reason, it is also here especially I must show that my dogmas are fortified (to make use of his own allegory) with a rampart, even of reasons, which is able to resist the fire of his strongest batteries. He has ranged them against me in chapter 144 of his Reply to the Questions of a Provincial (vol. III, p. 812), where he includes the theological doctrine in seven propositions and opposes thereto nineteen philosophic maxims, like so many large cannon capable of breaching my rampart. Let us begin with the theological propositions.

§109I. 'God,' he says, 'the Being eternal and necessary, infinitely good, holy, wise and powerful, possesses from all eternity a glory and a bliss that can never either increase or diminish.' This proposition of M. Bayle's is no less philosophical than theological. To say that God possesses a 'glory' when he is alone, that depends upon the meaning of the term. One may say, with some, that glory is the satisfaction one finds in being aware of one's own perfections; and in this sense God possesses it always. But when glory signifies that others become aware of these perfections, one may say that God acquires it only when he reveals himself to intelligent creatures; even though it be true that God thereby gains no new good, and it is rather the rational creatures who thence derive advantage, when they apprehend aright the glory of God.

§110II. 'He resolved freely upon the production of creatures, and he chose from among an infinite number of possible beings those whom it pleased him to choose, to give them existence, and to compose the universe of them, while he left all the rest in nothingness.' This proposition is also, just like the preceding one, in close conformity with that part of philosophy which is called natural theology. One must dwell a little on what is said here, that he chose the possible beings 'whom it pleased him to choose'. For it must be borne in mind that when I say, 'that pleases me', it is as though I were saying, 'I find it good'. Thus it is the ideal goodness of the object which pleases, and which makes me choose it among many others which do not please or which please less, that is to say, which contain less of that goodness which moves me. Now it is only the genuinely good that is capable of pleasing God: and consequently that which pleases God most, and which meets his choice, is the best.

[184] 111. III. 'Human nature having been among the Beings that he willed to produce, he created a man and a woman, and granted them amongst other favours free will, so that they had the power to obey him; but he threatened them with death if they should disobey the order that he gave them to abstain from a certain fruit.' This proposition is in part revealed, and should be admitted without difficulty, provided that free will be understood properly, according to the explanation I have given.

§112IV. 'They ate thereof nevertheless, and thenceforth they were condemned, they and all their posterity, to the miseries of this life, to temporal death and eternal damnation, and made subject to such a tendency to sin that they abandoned themselves thereto endlessly and without ceasing.' There is reason to suppose that the forbidden action by itself entailed these evil results in accordance with a natural effect, and that it was for that very reason, and not by a purely arbitrary decree, that God had forbidden it: much as one forbids knives to children. The famous Fludde or de Fluctibus, an Englishman, once wrote a book De Vita, Morte et Resurrectione under the name of R. Otreb, wherein he maintained that the fruit of the forbidden tree was a poison: but we cannot enter into this detail. It suffices that God forbade a harmful thing; one must not therefore suppose that God acted here simply in the character of a legislator who enacts a purely positive law, or of a judge who imposes and inflicts a punishment by an order of his will, without any connexion between the evil of guilt and the evil of punishment. And it is not necessary to suppose that God in justifiable annoyance deliberately put a corruption in the soul and the body of man, by an extraordinary action, in order to punish him: much as the Athenians gave hemlock-juice to their criminals. M. Bayle takes the matter thus: he speaks as if the original corruption had been put in the soul of the first man by an order and operation of God. It is that which calls forth his objection (Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, vol. III, ch. 178, p. 1218) 'that reason would not commend the monarch who, in order to chastise a rebel, condemned him and his descendants to have a tendency towards rebellion'. But this chastisement happens naturally to the wicked, without any ordinance of a legislator, and they become addicted to evil. If drunkards begot children inclined to the same vice, by a natural consequence of what takes place in bodies, that would be a punishment of their progenitors, but it would [185] not be a penalty of law. There is something comparable to this in the consequences of the first man's sin. For the contemplation of divine wisdom leads us to believe that the realm of nature serves that of grace; and that God as an Architect has done all in a manner befitting God considered as a Monarch. We do not sufficiently know the nature of the forbidden fruit, or that of the action, or its effects, to judge of the details of this matter: nevertheless we must do God justice so far as to believe that it comprised something other than what painters depict for us.