Theodicy Part 5

17. Calovius and Scherzer, authors well versed in Scholastic philosophy, and sundry other able theologians answered the Socinians at great length, and often with success: for they would not content themselves with the general and somewhat cavalier answers that were commonly used against that sect. The drift of such answers was: that their maxims were good in philosophy and not in theology; that it was the fault of heterogeneousness called [Greek: metabasis eis allo genos] to apply those maxims to a matter transcending reason; and that philosophy should be treated as a servant and not a mistress in relation to theology, according to the t.i.tle of the book by a Scot named Robert Baronius, _Philosophia Theologiae ancillans_. In fine, philosophy was a Hagar beside Sara and must be driven from the house with her Ishmael when she was refractory. There is something good in these answers: but one might abuse them, and set natural truths and truths of revelation at variance. Scholars therefore applied themselves to distinguishing between what is necessary and indispensable in natural or philosophic truths and that which is not so.

18. The two Protestant parties are tolerably in agreement when it is a question of making war on the Socinians; and as the philosophy of these sectaries is not of the most exact, in most cases the attack succeeded in reducing it. But the Protestants themselves had dissensions on the matter of the Eucharistic Sacrament. A section of those who are called Reformed (namely those who on that point follow rather Zwingli than Calvin) seemed to reduce the partic.i.p.ation in the body of Jesus Christ in the Holy Communion to a mere figurative representation, employing the maxim of the philosophers which states that a body can only be in one place at a time.

Contrariwise the Evangelicals (who name themselves thus in a particular sense to distinguish themselves from the Reformed), being more attached to the literal sense of Scripture, opined with Luther that this partic.i.p.ation was real, and that here there lay a supernatural Mystery. They reject, in truth, the dogma of Transubstantiation, which they believe to be without foundation in the Text; neither do they approve that of Consubstantiation or of Impanation, which one could only impute to them if one were ill-informed on their opinion. For they admit no inclusion of the body [85]

of Jesus Christ in the bread, nor do they even require any union of the one with the other: but they demand at least a concomitance, so that these two substances be received both at the same time. They believe that the ordinary sense of the words of Jesus Christ on an occasion so important as that which concerned the expression of his last wishes ought to be preserved. Thus in order to show that this sense is free from all absurdity which could make it repugnant to us, they maintain that the philosophic maxim restricting the existence of, and partaking in, bodies to one place alone is simply a consequence of the ordinary course of Nature. They make that no obstacle to the presence, in the ordinary sense of the word, of the body of our Saviour in such form as may be in keeping with the most glorified body. They do not resort to a vague diffusion of ubiquity, which would disperse the body and leave it nowhere in particular; nor do they admit the multiple-reduplication theory of some Schoolmen, as if to say one and the same body could be at the same time seated here and standing elsewhere. In fine, they so express themselves that many consider the opinion of Calvin, authorized by sundry confessions of faith from the Churches that have accepted his teaching, to be not so far removed from the Augsburg Confession as one might think: for he affirmed a partaking in the substance. The divergence rests perhaps only upon the fact that Calvin demands true faith in addition to the oral reception of the symbols, and consequently excludes the unworthy.

19. Thence we see that the dogma of real and substantial partic.i.p.ation can be supported (without resorting to the strange opinions of some Schoolmen) by a properly understood a.n.a.logy between _immediate operation_ and _presence_. Many philosophers have deemed that, even in the order of Nature, a body may operate from a distance immediately on many remote bodies at the same time. So do they believe, all the more, that nothing can prevent divine Omnipotence from causing one body to be present in many bodies together, since the transition from immediate operation to presence is but slight, the one perhaps depending upon the other. It is true that modern philosophers for some time now have denied the immediate natural operation of one body upon another remote from it, and I confess that I am of their opinion. Meanwhile remote operation has just been revived in England by the admirable Mr. Newton, who maintains that it is the nature of bodies to be attracted and gravitate one towards another, in proportion[86]

to the ma.s.s of each one, and the rays of attraction it receives.

Accordingly the famous Mr. Locke, in his answer to Bishop Stillingfleet, declares that having seen Mr. Newton's book he retracts what he himself said, following the opinion of the moderns, in his _Essay concerning Human Understanding_, to wit, that a body cannot operate immediately upon another except by touching it upon its surface and driving it by its motion. He acknowledges that G.o.d can put properties into matter which cause it to operate from a distance. Thus the theologians of the Augsburg Confession claim that G.o.d may ordain not only that a body operate immediately on divers bodies remote from one another, but that it even exist in their neighbourhood and be received by them in a way with which distances of place and dimensions of s.p.a.ce have nothing to do. Although this effect transcends the forces of Nature, they do not think it possible to show that it surpa.s.ses the power of the Author of Nature. For him it is easy to annul the laws that he has given or to dispense with them as seems good to him, in the same way as he was able to make iron float upon water and to stay the operation of fire upon the human body.

20. I found in comparing the _Rationale Theologic.u.m_ of Nicolaus Vedelius with the refutation by Johann Musaeus that these two authors, of whom one died while a Professor at Franecker after having taught at Geneva and the other finally became the foremost theologian at Jena, are more or less in agreement on the princ.i.p.al rules for the use of reason, but that it is in the application of these rules they disagree. For they both agree that revelation cannot be contrary to the truths whose necessity is called by philosophers 'logical' or 'metaphysical', that is to say, whose opposite implies contradiction. They both admit also that revelation will be able to combat maxims whose necessity is called 'physical' and is founded only upon the laws that the will of G.o.d has prescribed for Nature. Thus the question whether the presence of one and the same body in divers places is possible in the supernatural order only touches the application of the rule; and in order to decide this question conclusively by reason, one must needs explain exactly wherein the essence of body consists. Even the Reformed disagree thereon amongst themselves; the Cartesians confine it to extension, but their adversaries oppose that; and I think I have even observed that Gisbertus Voetius, a famous theologian of Utrecht, [87]

doubted the alleged impossibility of plurality of locations.

21. Furthermore, although the two Protestant parties agree that one must distinguish these two necessities which I have just indicated, namely metaphysical necessity and physical necessity, and that the first excludes exceptions even in the case of Mysteries, they are not yet sufficiently agreed upon the rules of interpretation, which serve to determine in what cases it is permitted to desert the letter of Scripture when one is not certain that it is contrary to strictly universal truths. It is agreed that there are cases where one must reject a literal interpretation that is not absolutely impossible, when it is otherwise unsuitable. For instance, all commentators agree that when our Lord said that Herod was a fox he meant it metaphorically; and one must accept that, unless one imagine with some fanatics that for the time the words of our Lord lasted Herod was actually changed into a fox. But it is not the same with the texts on which Mysteries are founded, where the theologians of the Augsburg Confession deem that one must keep to the literal sense. Since, moreover, this discussion belongs to the art of interpretation and not to that which is the proper sphere of logic, we will not here enter thereon, especially as it has nothing in common with the disputes that have arisen recently upon the conformity of faith with reason.

22. Theologians of all parties, I believe (fanatics alone excepted), agree at least that no article of faith must imply contradiction or contravene proofs as exact as those of mathematics, where the opposite of the conclusion can be reduced _ad absurdum_, that is, to contradiction. St.

Athanasius with good reason made sport of the preposterous ideas of some writers of his time, who maintained that G.o.d had suffered without any suffering. _'Pa.s.sus est impa.s.sibiliter. O ludicram doctrinam aedificantem simul et demolientem!'_ It follows thence that certain writers have been too ready to grant that the Holy Trinity is contrary to that great principle which states that two things which are the same as a third are also the same as each other: that is to say, if A is the same as B, and if C is the same as B, then A and C must also be the same as each other. For this principle is a direct consequence of that of contradiction, and forms the basis of all logic; and if it ceases, we can no longer reason with certainty. Thus when one says that the Father is G.o.d, that the Son is G.o.d and that the Holy Spirit is G.o.d, and that nevertheless there is only [88]

one G.o.d, although these three Persons differ from one another, one must consider that this word _G.o.d_ has not the same sense at the beginning as at the end of this statement. Indeed it signifies now the Divine Substance and now a Person of the G.o.dhead. In general, one must take care never to abandon the necessary and eternal truths for the sake of upholding Mysteries, lest the enemies of religion seize upon such an occasion for decrying both religion and Mysteries.

23. The distinction which is generally drawn between that which is _above_ reason and that which is _against_ reason is tolerably in accord with the distinction which has just been made between the two kinds of necessity.

For what is contrary to reason is contrary to the absolutely certain and inevitable truths; and what is above reason is in opposition only to what one is wont to experience or to understand. That is why I am surprised that there are people of intelligence who dispute this distinction, and that M.

Bayle should be of this number. The distinction is a.s.suredly very well founded. A truth is above reason when our mind (or even every created mind) cannot comprehend it. Such is, as it seems to me, the Holy Trinity; such are the miracles reserved for G.o.d alone, as for instance Creation; such is the choice of the order of the universe, which depends upon universal harmony, and upon the clear knowledge of an infinity of things at once. But a truth can never be contrary to reason, and once a dogma has been disputed and refuted by reason, instead of its being incomprehensible, one may say that nothing is easier to understand, nor more obvious, than its absurdity.

For I observed at the beginning that by REASON here I do not mean the opinions and discourses of men, nor even the habit they have formed of judging things according to the usual course of Nature, but rather the inviolable linking together of truths.

24. I must come now to the great question which M. Bayle brought up recently, to wit, whether a truth, and especially a truth of faith, can prove to be subject to irrefutable objections. This excellent author appears to answer with a bold affirmative: he quotes theologians of repute in his party, and even in the Church of Rome, who appear to say the same as he affirms; and he cites philosophers who have believed that there are even philosophical truths whose champions cannot answer the objections that are brought up against them. He believes that the theological doctrine of [89]

predestination is of this nature, and in philosophy that of the composition of the _Continuum_. These are, indeed, the two labyrinths which have ever exercised theologians and philosophers. Libertus Fromondus, a theologian of Louvain (a great friend of Jansenius, whose posthumous book ent.i.tled _Augustinus_ he in fact published), who also wrote a book ent.i.tled explicitly _Labyrinthus de Compositione Continui_, experienced in full measure the difficulties inherent in both doctrines; and the renowned Ochino admirably presented what he calls 'the labyrinths of predestination'.

25. But these writers have not denied the possibility of finding thread in the labyrinth; they have recognized the difficulty, but they have surely not turned difficulty into sheer impossibility. As for me, I confess that I cannot agree with those who maintain that a truth can admit of irrefutable objections: for is an _objection_ anything but an argument whose conclusion contradicts our thesis? And is not an irrefutable argument a _demonstration_? And how can one know the certainty of demonstrations except by examining the argument in detail, the form and the matter, in order to see if the form is good, and then if each premiss is either admitted or proved by another argument of like force, until one is able to make do with admitted premisses alone? Now if there is such an objection against our thesis we must say that the falsity of this thesis is demonstrated, and that it is impossible for us to have reasons sufficient to prove it; otherwise two contradictories would be true at once. One must always yield to proofs, whether they be proposed in positive form or advanced in the shape of objections. And it is wrong and fruitless to try to weaken opponents' proofs, under the pretext that they are only objections, since the opponent can play the same game and can reverse the denominations, exalting his arguments by naming them 'proofs' and sinking ours under the blighting t.i.tle of 'objections'.

26. It is another question whether we are always obliged to examine the objections we may have to face, and to retain some doubt in respect of our own opinion, or what is called _formido oppositi_, until this examination has been made. I would venture to say no, for otherwise one would never attain to certainty and our conclusion would be always provisional. I believe that able geometricians will scarce be troubled by the objections of Joseph Scaliger against Archimedes, or by those of Mr. Hobbes [90]

against Euclid; but that is because they have fully understood and are sure of the proofs. Nevertheless it is sometimes well to show oneself ready to examine certain objections. On the one hand it may serve to rescue people from their error, while on the other we ourselves may profit by it; for specious fallacies often contain some useful solution and bring about the removal of considerable difficulties. That is why I have always liked ingenious objections made against my own opinions, and I have never examined them without profit: witness those which M. Bayle formerly made against my System of Pre-established Harmony, not to mention those which M.

Arnauld, M. l'Abbe Foucher and Father Lami, O.S.B., made to me on the same subject. But to return to the princ.i.p.al question, I conclude from reasons I have just set forth that when an objection is put forward against some truth, it is always possible to answer it satisfactorily.

27. It may be also that M. Bayle does not mean 'insoluble objections' in the sense that I have just explained. I observe that he varies, at least in his expressions: for in his posthumous Reply to M. le Clerc he does not admit that one can bring demonstrations against the truths of faith. It appears therefore that he takes the objections to be insoluble only in respect of our present degree of enlightenment; and in this Reply, p. 35, he even does not despair of the possibility that one day a solution hitherto unknown may be found by someone. Concerning that more will be said later. I hold an opinion, however, that will perchance cause surprise, namely that this solution has been discovered entire, and is not even particularly difficult. Indeed a mediocre intelligence capable of sufficient care, and using correctly the rules of common logic, is in a position to answer the most embarra.s.sing objection made against truth, when the objection is only taken from reason, and when it is claimed to be a 'demonstration'. Whatever scorn the generality of moderns have to-day for the logic of Aristotle, one must acknowledge that it teaches infallible ways of resisting error in these conjunctures. For one has only to examine the argument according to the rules and it will always be possible to see whether it is lacking in form or whether there are premisses such as are not yet proved by a good argument.

28. It is quite another matter when there is only a question of _probabilities_, for the art of judging from probable reasons is not yet well established; so that our logic in this connexion is still very [91]

imperfect, and to this very day we have little beyond the art of judging from demonstrations. But this art is sufficient here: for when it is a question of opposing reason to an article of our faith, one is not disturbed by objections that only attain probability. Everyone agrees that appearances are against Mysteries, and that they are by no means probable when regarded only from the standpoint of reason; but it suffices that they have in them nothing of absurdity. Thus demonstrations are required if they are to be refuted.

29. And doubtless we are so to understand it when Holy Scripture warns us that the wisdom of G.o.d is foolishness before men, and when St. Paul observed that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is foolishness unto the Greeks, as well as unto the Jews a stumbling-block. For, after all, one truth cannot contradict another, and the light of reason is no less a gift of G.o.d than that of revelation. Also it is a matter of no difficulty among theologians who are expert in their profession, that the motives of credibility justify, once for all, the authority of Holy Scripture before the tribunal of reason, so that reason in consequence gives way before it, as before a new light, and sacrifices thereto all its probabilities. It is more or less as if a new president sent by the prince must show his letters patent in the a.s.sembly where he is afterwards to preside. That is the tendency of sundry good books that we have on the truth of religion, such as those of Augustinus Steuchus, of Du Plessis-Mornay or of Grotius: for the true religion must needs have marks that the false religions have not, else would Zoroaster, Brahma, Somonacodom and Mahomet be as worthy of belief as Moses and Jesus Christ. Nevertheless divine faith itself, when it is kindled in the soul, is something more than an opinion, and depends not upon the occasions or the motives that have given it birth; it advances beyond the intellect, and takes possession of the will and of the heart, to make us act with zeal and joyfully as the law of G.o.d commands. Then we have no further need to think of reasons or to pause over the difficulties of argument which the mind may antic.i.p.ate.

30. Thus what we have just said of human reason, which is extolled and decried by turns, and often without rule or measure, may show our lack of exact.i.tude and how much we are accessary to our own errors. Nothing would be so easy to terminate as these disputes on the rights of faith and of reason if men would make use of the commonest rules of logic and reason[92]

with even a modic.u.m of attention. Instead of that, they become involved in oblique and ambiguous phrases, which give them a fine field for declamation, to make the most of their wit and their learning. It would seem, indeed, that they have no wish to see the naked truth, peradventure because they fear that it may be more disagreeable than error: for they know not the beauty of the Author of all things, who is the source of truth.

31. This negligence is a general defect of humanity, and one not to be laid to the charge of any particular person. _Abundamus dulcibus vitiis_, as Quintilian said of the style of Seneca, and we take pleasure in going astray. Exact.i.tude incommodes us and rules we regard as puerilities. Thus it is that common logic (although it is more or less sufficient for the examination of arguments that tend towards certainty) is relegated to schoolboys; and there is not even a thought for a kind of logic which should determine the balance between probabilities, and would be so necessary in deliberations of importance. So true is it that our mistakes for the most part come from scorn or lack of the art of thinking: for nothing is more imperfect than our logic when we pa.s.s beyond necessary arguments. The most excellent philosophers of our time, such as the authors of _The Art of Thinking_, of _The Search for Truth_ and of the _Essay concerning Human Understanding_, have been very far from indicating to us the true means fitted to a.s.sist the faculty whose business it is to make us weigh the probabilities of the true and the false: not to mention the art of discovery, in which success is still more difficult of attainment, and whereof we have nothing beyond very imperfect samples in mathematics.

32. One thing which might have contributed most towards M. Bayle's belief that the difficulties of reason in opposition to faith cannot be obviated is that he seems to demand that G.o.d be justified in some such manner as that commonly used for pleading the cause of a man accused before his judge. But he has not remembered that in the tribunals of men, which cannot always penetrate to the truth, one is often compelled to be guided by signs and probabilities, and above all by presumptions or prejudices; whereas it is agreed, as we have already observed, that Mysteries are not probable.

For instance, M. Bayle will not have it that one can justify the goodness of G.o.d in the permission of sin, because probability would be against a man that should happen to be in circ.u.mstances comparable in our eyes to [93]

this permission. G.o.d foresees that Eve will be deceived by the serpent if he places her in the circ.u.mstances wherein she later found herself; and nevertheless he placed her there. Now if a father or a guardian did the same in regard to his child or his ward, if a friend did so in regard to a young person whose behaviour was his concern, the judge would not be satisfied by the excuses of an advocate who said that the man only permitted the evil, without doing it or willing it: he would rather take this permission as a sign of ill intention, and would regard it as a sin of omission, which would render the one convicted thereof accessary in another's sin of commission.

33. But it must be borne in mind that when one has foreseen the evil and has not prevented it although it seems as if one could have done so with ease, and one has even done things that have facilitated it, it does not follow on that account _necessarily_ that one is accessary thereto. It is only a very strong presumption, such as commonly replaces truth in human affairs, but which would be destroyed by an exact consideration of the facts, supposing we were capable of that in relation to G.o.d. For amongst lawyers that is called 'presumption' which must provisionally pa.s.s for truth in case the contrary is not proved; and it says more than 'conjecture', although the _Dictionary_ of the Academy has not sifted the difference. Now there is every reason to conclude unquestionably that one would find through this consideration, if only it were attainable, that reasons most just, and stronger than those which appear contrary to them, have compelled the All-Wise to permit the evil, and even to do things which have facilitated it. Of this some instances will be given later.

34. It is none too easy, I confess, for a father, a guardian, a friend to have such reasons in the case under consideration. Yet the thing is not absolutely impossible, and a skilled writer of fiction might perchance find an extraordinary case that would even justify a man in the circ.u.mstances I have just indicated. But in reference to G.o.d there is no need to suppose or to establish particular reasons such as may have induced him to permit the evil; general reasons suffice. One knows that he takes care of the whole universe, whereof all the parts are connected; and one must thence infer that he has had innumerable considerations whose result made him deem it inadvisable to prevent certain evils.

35. It should even be concluded that there must have been great or [94]

rather invincible reasons which prompted the divine Wisdom to the permission of the evil that surprises us, from the mere fact that this permission has occurred: for nothing can come from G.o.d that is not altogether consistent with goodness, justice and holiness. Thus we can judge by the event (or _a posteriori_) that the permission was indispensable, although it be not possible for us to show this (_a priori_) by the detailed reasons that G.o.d can have had therefor; as it is not necessary either that we show this to justify him. M. Bayle himself aptly says concerning that (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, ch. 165, p. 1067): Sin made its way into the world; G.o.d therefore was able to permit it without detriment to his perfections; _ab actu ad potentiam valet consequentia._ In G.o.d this conclusion holds good: he did this, therefore he did it well. It is not, then, that we have no notion of justice in general fit to be applied also to G.o.d's justice; nor is it that G.o.d's justice has other rules than the justice known of men, but that the case in question is quite different from those which are common among men.

Universal right is the same for G.o.d and for men; but the question of fact is quite different in their case and his.

36. We may even a.s.sume or pretend (as I have already observed) that there is something similar among men to this circ.u.mstance in G.o.d's actions. A man might give such great and strong proofs of his virtue and his holiness that all the most apparent reasons one could put forward against him to charge him with an alleged crime, for instance a larceny or murder, would deserve to be rejected as the calumnies of false witnesses or as an extraordinary play of chance which sometimes throws suspicion on the most innocent. Thus in a case where every other would run the risk of being condemned or put to the torture (according to the laws of the country), this man would be absolved by his judges unanimously. Now in this case, which indeed is rare, but which is not impossible, one might say in a sense (_sano sensu_) that there is a conflict between reason and faith, and that the rules of law are other in respect of this person than they are in respect of the remainder of mankind. But that, when explained, will signify only that appearances of reason here give way before the faith that is due to the word and the integrity of this great and holy man, and that he is privileged above other men; not indeed as if there were one law for others and another for him, nor as if one had no understanding of what justice is in relation to him.

It is rather because the rules of universal justice do not find here [95]

the application that they receive elsewhere, or because they favour him instead of accusing him, since there are in this personage qualities so admirable, that by virtue of a good logic of probabilities one should place more faith in his word than in that of many others.

37. Since it is permitted here to imagine possible cases, may one not suppose this incomparable man to be the Adept or the Possessor of

_'that blessed Stone_ _Able to enrich all earthly Kings alone'_

and that he spends every day prodigious sums in order to feed and to rescue from distress countless numbers of poor men? Be there never so many witnesses or appearances of every kind tending to prove that this great benefactor of the human race has just committed some larceny, is it not true that the whole earth would make mock of the accusation, however specious it might be? Now G.o.d is infinitely above the goodness and the power of this man, and consequently there are no reasons at all, however apparent they be, that can hold good against faith, that is, against the a.s.surance or the confidence in G.o.d wherewith we can and ought to say that G.o.d has done all things well. The objections are therefore not insoluble.

They only involve prejudices and probabilities, which are, however, overthrown by reasons incomparably stronger. One must not say either that what we call _justice_ is nothing in relation to G.o.d, that he is the absolute Master of all things even to the point of being able to condemn the innocent without violating his justice, or finally that justice is something arbitrary where he is concerned. Those are rash and dangerous expressions, whereunto some have been led astray to the discredit of the attributes of G.o.d. For if such were the case there would be no reason for praising his goodness and his justice: rather would it be as if the most wicked spirit, the Prince of evil genii, the evil principle of the Manichaeans, were the sole master of the universe, just as I observed before. What means would there be of distinguishing the true G.o.d from the false G.o.d of Zoroaster if all things depended upon the caprice of an arbitrary power and there were neither rule nor consideration for anything whatever?

38. It is therefore more than evident that nothing compels us to commit ourselves to a doctrine so strange, since it suffices to say that we [96]

have not enough knowledge of the facts when there is a question of answering probabilities which appear to throw doubt upon the justice and the goodness of G.o.d, and which would vanish away if the facts were well known to us. We need neither renounce reason in order to listen to faith nor blind ourselves in order to see clearly, as Queen Christine used to say: it is enough to reject ordinary appearances when they are contrary to Mysteries; and this is not contrary to reason, since even in natural things we are very often undeceived about appearances either by experience or by superior reasons. All that has been set down here in advance, only with the object of showing more plainly wherein the fault of the objections and the abuse of reason consists in the present case, where the claim is made that reason has greatest force against faith: we shall come afterwards to a more exact discussion of that which concerns the origin of evil and the permission of sin with its consequences.

39. For now, it will be well to continue our examination of the important question of the use of reason in theology, and to make reflexions upon what M. Bayle has said thereon in divers pa.s.sages of his works. As he paid particular attention in his _Historical and Critical Dictionary_ to expounding the objections of the Manichaeans and those of the Pyrrhonians, and as this procedure had been criticized by some persons zealous for religion, he placed a dissertation at the end of the second edition of this _Dictionary_, which aimed at showing, by examples, by authorities and by reasons, the innocence and usefulness of his course of action. I am persuaded (as I have said above) that the specious objections one can urge against truth are very useful, and that they serve to confirm and to illumine it, giving opportunity to intelligent persons to find new openings or to turn the old to better account. But M. Bayle seeks therein a usefulness quite the reverse of this: it would be that of displaying the power of faith by showing that the truths it teaches cannot sustain the attacks of reason and that it nevertheless holds its own in the heart of the faithful. M. Nicole seems to call that 'the triumph of G.o.d's authority over human reason', in the words of his quoted by M. Bayle in the third volume of his _Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_ (ch. 177, p. 120).

But since reason is a gift of G.o.d, even as faith is, contention between them would cause G.o.d to contend against G.o.d; and if the objections of reason against any article of faith are insoluble, then it must be said that this alleged article will be false and not revealed: this will be [97]

a chimera of the human mind, and the triumph of this faith will be capable of comparison with bonfires lighted after a defeat. Such is the doctrine of the d.a.m.nation of unbaptized children, which M. Nicole would have us a.s.sume to be a consequence of original sin; such would be the eternal d.a.m.nation of adults lacking the light that is necessary for the attainment of salvation.

40. Yet everyone need not enter into theological discussions; and persons whose condition allows not of exact researches should be content with instruction on faith, without being disturbed by the objections; and if some exceeding great difficulty should happen to strike them, it is permitted to them to avert the mind from it, offering to G.o.d a sacrifice of their curiosity: for when one is a.s.sured of a truth one has no need to listen to the objections. As there are many people whose faith is rather small and shallow to withstand such dangerous tests, I think one must not present them with that which might be poisonous for them; or, if one cannot hide from them what is only too public, the antidote must be added to it; that is to say, one must try to add the answer to the objection, certainly not withhold it as un.o.btainable.

41. The pa.s.sages from the excellent theologians who speak of this triumph of faith can and should receive a meaning appropriate to the principles I have just affirmed. There appear in some objects of faith two great qualities capable of making it triumph over reason, the one is _incomprehensibility_, the other is _the lack of probability_. But one must beware of adding thereto the third quality whereof M. Bayle speaks, and of saying that what one believes is _indefensible_: for that would be to cause reason in its turn to triumph in a manner that would destroy faith.

Incomprehensibility does not prevent us from believing even natural truths.

For instance (as I have already pointed out) we do not comprehend the nature of odours and savours, and yet we are persuaded, by a kind of faith which we owe to the evidence of the senses, that these perceptible qualities are founded upon the nature of things and that they are not illusions.

42. There are also things contrary to appearances, which we admit when they are sufficiently verified. There is a little romance of Spanish origin, whose t.i.tle states that one must not always believe what one sees. What was there more specious than the lie of the false Martin Guerre, who was acknowledged as the true Martin by the true Martin's wife and [98]

relatives, and caused the judges and the relatives to waver for a long time even after the arrival of the other? Nevertheless the truth was known in the end. It is the same with faith. I have already observed that all one can oppose to the goodness and the justice of G.o.d is nothing but appearances, which would be strong against a man, but which are nullified when they are applied to G.o.d and when they are weighed against the proofs that a.s.sure us of the infinite perfection of his attributes. Thus faith triumphs over false reasons by means of sound and superior reasons that have made us embrace it; but it would not triumph if the contrary opinion had for it reasons as strong as or even stronger than those which form the foundation of faith, that is, if there were invincible and conclusive objections against faith.

43. It is well also to observe here that what M. Bayle calls a 'triumph of faith' is in part a triumph of demonstrative reason against apparent and deceptive reasons which are improperly set against the demonstrations. For it must be taken into consideration that the objections of the Manichaeans are hardly less contrary to natural theology than to revealed theology. And supposing one surrendered to them Holy Scripture, original sin, the grace of G.o.d in Jesus Christ, the pains of h.e.l.l and the other articles of our religion, one would not even so be delivered from their objections: for one cannot deny that there is in the world physical evil (that is, suffering) and moral evil (that is, crime) and even that physical evil is not always distributed here on earth according to the proportion of moral evil, as it seems that justice demands. There remains, then, this question of natural theology, how a sole Principle, all-good, all-wise and all-powerful, has been able to admit evil, and especially to permit sin, and how it could resolve to make the wicked often happy and the good unhappy?

44. Now we have no need of revealed faith to know that there is such a sole Principle of all things, entirely good and wise. Reason teaches us this by infallible proofs; and in consequence all the objections taken from the course of things, in which we observe imperfections, are only based on false appearances. For, if we were capable of understanding the universal harmony, we should see that what we are tempted to find fault with is connected with the plan most worthy of being chosen; in a word, we _should see_, and should not _believe_ only, that what G.o.d has done is the best. I call 'seeing' here what one knows _a priori_ by the causes; and [99]

'believing' what one only judges by the effects, even though the one be as certainly known as the other. And one can apply here too the saying of St.

Paul (2 Cor. v. 7), that we walk by _faith_ and not by _sight_. For the infinite wisdom of G.o.d being known to us, we conclude that the evils we experience had to be permitted, and this we conclude from the effect or _a posteriori_, that is to say, because they exist. It is what M. Bayle acknowledges; and he ought to content himself with that, and not claim that one must put an end to the false appearances which are contrary thereto. It is as if one asked that there should be no more dreams or optical illusions.

45. And it is not to be doubted that this faith and this confidence in G.o.d, who gives us insight into his infinite goodness and prepares us for his love, in spite of the appearances of harshness that may repel us, are an admirable exercise for the virtues of Christian theology, when the divine grace in Jesus Christ arouses these motions within us. That is what Luther aptly observed in opposition to Erasmus, saying that it is love in the highest degree to love him who to flesh and blood appears so unlovable, so harsh toward the unfortunate and so ready to condemn, and to condemn for evils in which he appears to be the cause or accessary, at least in the eyes of those who allow themselves to be dazzled by false reasons. One may therefore say that the triumph of true reason illumined by divine grace is at the same time the triumph of faith and love.

46. M. Bayle appears to have taken the matter quite otherwise: he declares himself against reason, when he might have been content to censure its abuse. He quotes the words of Cotta in Cicero, where he goes so far as to say that if reason were a gift of the G.o.ds providence would be to blame for having given it, since it tends to our harm. M. Bayle also thinks that human reason is a source of destruction and not of edification (_Historical and Critical Dictionary_, p. 2026, col. 2), that it is a runner who knows not where to stop, and who, like another Penelope, herself destroys her own work.

_Destruit, aedificat, mutat quadrata rotundis._

(_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, vol. III, p. 725). But he takes pains especially to pile up many authorities one upon the other, in order to show that theologians of all parties reject the use of reason just as he does, and that they call attention to such gleams of reason as oppose religion only that they may sacrifice them to faith by a mere [100]

repudiation, answering nothing but the conclusion of the argument that is brought against them. He begins with the New Testament. Jesus Christ was content to say: 'Follow Me' (Luke v. 27; ix. 59). The Apostles said: 'Believe, and thou shalt be saved' (Acts xvi. 3). St. Paul acknowledges that his 'doctrine is obscure' (1 Cor. xiii. 12), that 'one can comprehend nothing therein' unless G.o.d impart a spiritual discernment, and without that it only pa.s.ses for foolishness (1 Cor. ii. 14). He exhorts the faithful 'to beware of philosophy' (Col. ii. 8) and to avoid disputations in that science, which had caused many persons to lose faith.

47. As for the Fathers of the Church, M. Bayle refers us to the collection of pa.s.sages from them against the use of philosophy and of reason which M.