We are told a story of the simple-heartedness of an Italian monk, which
does him honor. This good man preaching one day felt obliged to announce
to his auditory that, thanks to Heaven, he had at last discovered a sure
means of rendering all men happy. "The devil," said he, "tempts men but
to have them as comrades of his misery in hell. Let us address
ourselves, then, to the Pope, who possesses the keys of paradise and of
hell; let us ask him to beseech God, at the head of the whole Church, to
reconcile Himself with the devil; to take him back into His favor; to
re-establish him in His first rank. This can not fail to put an end to
his sinister projects against mankind." The good monk did not see,
perhaps, that the devil is at least fully as useful as God to the
ministers of religion. These reap too many benefits from their
differences to lend themselves willingly to a reconciliation between the
two enemies ties, upon whose contests their existence and their revenues
depend. If men would cease to be tempted and to sin, the ministry of
priests would become useless to them. Manicheism is evidently the
support of all religions; but unfortunately the devil, being invented to
remove all suspicion of malice from Divinity, proves to us at every
moment the powerlessness or the awkwardness of his celestial Adversary.
LXXVI.--IF GOD COULD NOT RENDER HUMAN NATURE SINLESS, HE HAS NO RIGHT TO
PUNISH MAN.
Man's nature, it is said, must necessarily become corrupt. God could not
endow him with sinlessness, which is an inalienable portion of Divine
perfection. But if God could not render him sinless, why did He take the
trouble of creating man, whose nature was to become corrupt, and which,
consequently, had to offend God? On the other side, if God Himself was
not able to render human nature sinless, what right had He to punish men
for not being sinless? It is but by the right of might. But the right of
the strongest is violence; and violence is not suited to the most Just
of Beings. God would be supremely unjust if He punished men for not
having a portion of the Divine perfections, or for not being able to be
Gods like Himself.
Could not God have at least endowed men with that sort of perfection of
which their nature is susceptible? If some men are good or render
themselves agreeable to their God, why did not this God bestow the same
favor or give the same dispositions to all beings of our kind? Why does
the number of wicked exceed so greatly the number of good people? Why,
for every friend, does God find ten thousand enemies in a world which
depended upon Him alone to people with honest men? If it is true that
God intends to form in heaven a court of saints, of chosen ones, or of
men who have lived in this world according to His views, would He not
have had a court more numerous, more brilliant, and more honorable to
Him, if it were composed of all the men to whom, in creating them, He
could have granted the degree of goodness necessary to obtain eternal
happiness? Finally, were it not easier not to take man from nothingness
than to create him full of defects, rebellious to his Creator,
perpetually exposed to lose himself by a fatal abuse of his liberty?
Instead of creating men, a perfect God ought to have created only docile
and submissive angels. The angels, it is said, are free; a few among
them have sinned; but all of them have not sinned; all have not abused
their liberty by revolting against their Master. Could not God have
created only angels of the good kind? If God could create angels who
have not sinned, could He not create men sinless, or those who would
never abuse their liberty by doing evil. If the chosen ones are
incapable of sinning in heaven, could not God have made sinless men upon
the earth?
LXXVII.--IT IS ABSURD TO SAY THAT GOD'S CONDUCT MUST BE A MYSTERY TO MAN,
AND THAT HE HAS NO RIGHT TO EXAMINE AND JUDGE IT.
We are told that the enormous distance which separates God from men,
makes God's conduct necessarily a mystery for us, and that we have no
right to interrogate our Master. Is this statement satisfactory? But
according to you, when my eternal happiness is involved, have I not the
right to examine God's own conduct? It is but with the hope of happiness
that men submit to the empire of a God. A despot to whom men are
subjected but through fear, a master whom they can not interrogate, a
totally inaccessible sovereign, can not merit the homage of intelligent
beings. If God's conduct is a mystery to me, it is not made for me. Man
can not adore, admire, respect, or imitate a conduct of which everything
is impossible to conceive, or of which he can not form any but revolting
ideas; unless it is pretended that he should worship all the things of
which he is forced to be ignorant, and then all that he does not
understand becomes admirable.
Priests! you teach us that the designs of God are impenetrable; that His
ways are not our ways; that His thoughts are not our thoughts; that it
is folly to complain of His administration, whose motives and secret
ways are entirely unknown to us; that there is temerity in accusing Him
of unjust judgments, because they are incomprehensible to us. But do you
not see that by speaking in this manner, you destroy with your own hands
all your profound systems which have no design but to explain the ways
of Divinity that you call impenetrable? These judgments, these ways, and
these designs, have you penetrated them? You dare not say so; and,
although you season incessantly, you do not understand them more than we
do. If by chance you know the plan of God, which you tell us to admire,
while there are many people who find it so little worthy of a just,
good, intelligent, and rational being; do not say that this plan is
impenetrable. If you are as ignorant as we, have some indulgence for
those who ingenuously confess that they comprehend nothing of it, or
that they see nothing in it Divine. Cease to persecute for opinions
which you do not understand yourselves; cease to slander each other for
dreams and conjectures which are altogether contradictory; speak to us
of intelligible and truly useful things; and no longer tell us of the
impenetrable ways of a God, about which you do nothing but stammer and
contradict yourselves.
In speaking to us incessantly of the immense depths of Divine wisdom, in
forbidding us to fathom these depths by telling us that it is insolence
to call God to the tribunal of our humble reason, in making it a crime
to judge our Master, the theologians only confess the embarrassment in
which they find themselves as soon as they have to render account of the
conduct of a God, which they tell us is marvelous, only because it is
totally impossible for them to understand it themselves.
LXXVIII.--IT IS ABSURD TO CALL HIM A GOD OF JUSTICE AND GOODNESS, WHO
INFLICTS EVIL INDISCRIMINATELY ON THE GOOD AND THE WICKED, UPON THE
INNOCENT AND THE GUILTY; IT IS IDLE TO DEMAND THAT THE UNFORTUNATE
SHOULD CONSOLE THEMSELVES FOR THEIR MISFORTUNES, IN THE VERY ARMS OF THE
ONE WHO ALONE IS THE AUTHOR OF THEM.
Physical evil commonly passes as the punishment of sin. Calamities,
diseases, famines, wars, earthquakes, are the means which God employs to
chastise perverse men. Therefore, they have no difficulty in attributing
these evils to the severity of a just and good God. However, do we not
see these plagues fall indiscriminately upon the good and the wicked,
upon the impious and the pious, upon the innocent and the guilty? How
can we be made to admire, in this proceeding, the justice and the
goodness of a being, the idea of whom appears so consoling to the
unfortunate? Doubtless the brain of these unfortunate ones has been
disturbed by their misfortunes, since they forget that God is the
arbiter of things, the sole dispenser of the events of this world. In
this case ought they not to blame Him for the evils for which they would
find consolation in His arms? Unfortunate father! you console yourself
in the bosom of Providence for the loss of a cherished child or of a
wife, who made your happiness! Alas! do you not see that your God has
killed them? Your God has rendered you miserable; and you want Him to
console you for the fearful blows He has inflicted upon you.
The fantastic and supernatural notions of theology have succeeded so
thoroughly in overcoming the simplest, the clearest, the most natural
ideas of the human spirit, that the pious, incapable of accusing God of
malice, accustom themselves to look upon these sad afflictions as
indubitable proofs of celestial goodness. Are they in affliction, they
are told to believe that God loves them, that God visits them, that God
wishes to try them. Thus it is that religion changes evil into good!
Some one has said profanely, but with reason: "If the good God treats
thus those whom He loves, I beseech Him very earnestly not to think of
me." Men must have formed very sinister and very cruel ideas of their
God whom they call so good, in order to persuade themselves that the
most frightful calamities and the most painful afflictions are signs of
His favor! Would a wicked Genii or a Devil be more ingenious in
tormenting his enemies, than sometimes is this God of goodness, who is
so often occupied with inflicting His chastisements upon His dearest
friends?
LXXIX.--A GOD WHO PUNISHES THE FAULTS WHICH HE COULD HAVE PREVENTED, IS A
FOOL, WHO ADDS INJUSTICE TO FOOLISHNESS.
What would we say or a father who, we are assured, watches without
relaxation over the welfare of his feeble and unforeseeing children, and
who, however, would leave them at liberty to go astray in the midst of
rocks, precipices, and waters; who would prevent them but rarely from
following their disordered appetites; who would permit them to handle,
without precaution, deadly arms, at the risk of wounding themselves
severely? What would we think of this same father, if, instead of
blaming himself for the harm which would have happened to his poor
children, he should punish them for their faults in the most cruel way?
We would say, with reason, that this father is a fool, who joins
injustice to foolishness. A God who punishes the faults which He could
have prevented, is a being who lacks wisdom, goodness, and equity. A God
of foresight would prevent evil, and in this way would be saved the
trouble of punishing it. A good God would not punish weaknesses which He
knows to be inherent in human nature. A just God, if He has made man,
would not punish him for not being strong enough to resist his desires.
To punish weakness, is the most unjust tyranny. Is it not calumniating a
just God, to say that He punishes men for their faults, even in the
present life? How would He punish beings whom He alone could correct,
and who, as long as they had not received grace, can not act otherwise
than they do?
According to the principles of theologians themselves, man, in his
actual state of corruption, can do nothing but evil, for without Divine
grace he has not the strength to do good. Moreover, if man's nature,
abandoned to itself, of destitute of Divine help, inclines him
necessarily to evil, or renders him incapable of doing good, what
becomes of his free will? According to such principles, man can merit
neither reward nor punishment; in rewarding man for the good he does,
God would but recompense Himself; in punishing man for the evil he does,
God punishes him for not having been given the grace, without which it
was impossible for him to do better.