'The work most worthy of God's wisdom involves amongst other things the sin
of all men and the eternal damnation of the majority of men.
'Now God wills of necessity the work most worthy of his wisdom.
'He wills therefore of necessity the work that involves amongst other
things the sin of all men and the eternal damnation of the majority of
men.'
The major holds good, but the minor I deny. The decrees of God are always
free, even though God be always prompted thereto by reasons which lie in
the intention towards good: for to be morally compelled by wisdom, to be
bound by the consideration of good, is to be free; it is not compulsion in
the metaphysical sense. And metaphysical necessity alone, as I have
observed so many times, is opposed to freedom.
238. I shall not examine the syllogisms that M. Bayle urges in objection in
the following chapter (Ch. 152), against the system of the Supralapsarians,
and particularly against the oration made by Theodore de Bèze at the [274]
Conference of Montbéliard in the year 1586. This conference also only
served to increase the acrimony of the parties. 'God created the World to
his glory: his glory is not known (according to Bèze), if his mercy and his
justice are not declared; for this cause simply by his grace he decreed for
some men life eternal, and for others by a just judgement eternal
damnation. Mercy presupposes misery, justice presupposes guilt.' (He might
have added that misery also supposes guilt.) 'Nevertheless God being good,
indeed goodness itself, he created man good and righteous, but unstable,
and capable of sinning of his own free will. Man did not fall at random or
rashly, or through causes ordained by some other God, as the Manichaeans
hold, but by the providence of God; in such a way notwithstanding, that God
was not involved in the fault, inasmuch as man was not constrained to sin.'
239. This system is not of the best conceived: it is not well fitted to
show forth the wisdom, the goodness and the justice of God; and happily it
is almost abandoned to-day. If there were not other more profound reasons
capable of inducing God to permit guilt, the source of misery, there would
be neither guilt nor misery in the world, for the reasons alleged here do
not suffice. He would declare his mercy better in preventing misery, and he
would declare his justice better in preventing guilt, in advancing virtue,
in recompensing it. Besides, one does not see how he who not only causes a
man to be capable of falling, but who so disposes circumstances that they
contribute towards causing his fall, is not culpable, if there are no other
reasons compelling him thereto. But when one considers that God, altogether
good and wise, must have produced all the virtue, goodness, happiness
whereof the best plan of the universe is capable, and that often an evil in
some parts may serve the greater good of the whole, one readily concludes
that God may have given room for unhappiness, and even permitted guilt, as
he has done, without deserving to be blamed. It is the only remedy that
supplies what all systems lack, however they arrange the decrees. These
thoughts have already been favoured by St. Augustine, and one may say of
Eve what the poet said of the hand of Mucius Scaevola:
_Si non errasset, fecerat illa minus_.
240. I find that the famous English prelate who wrote an ingenious book on
the origin of evil, some passages of which were disputed by M. Bayle [275]
in the second volume of his _Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, while
disagreeing with some of the opinions that I have upheld here and appearing
to resort sometimes to a despotic power, as if the will of God did not
follow the rules of wisdom in relation to good or evil, but decreed
arbitrarily that such and such a thing must be considered good or evil; and
as if even the will of the creature, in so far as it is free, did not
choose because the object appears good to him, but by a purely arbitrary
determination, independent of the representation of the object; this
bishop, I say, in other passages nevertheless says things which seem more
in favour of my doctrine than of what appears contrary thereto in his own.
He says that what an infinitely wise and free cause has chosen is better
than what it has not chosen. Is not that recognizing that goodness is the
object and the reason of his choice? In this sense one will here aptly say:
_Sic placuit superis; quaerere plura, nefas_.
[276]
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