EVIL.

(Origin of).

The fathers of the church, who have so well refuted the Marcionites, the Manichees, and in general all those who admitted two principles, have not well answered the objections which relate to the origin of evil. They should have abandoned all the reasons à priori, as outworks, which may be insulted, and, cannot be maintained; they should have contented themselves with reasons à posteriori, and placed all their forces behind this intrenchment. The Old and New Testament are two parts of revelation, which mutually confirm one another; since therefore these Heretics acknowledged the divine authority of the New, it was no difficult matter to prove to them the Divine authority of the Old, after which it was easy to destroy their objections by shewing that they are contrary to experience. According to scripture, there is but one good principle, and yet moral and physical evil have been introduced

among mankind. It is not therefore contrary to the nature of a good principle, to permit the introduction of moral evil, and to punish crimes; for it is not more evident, that four and four are eight, than it is evident that if a thing come to pass, it is possible. “Ab actu ad potentiam valet consequentia. - - - From fact to possibility the consequence is good,” is one of the clearest and most incontestable axioms in metaphysics. This is an impregnable rampart, and this is sufficient to render the cause of the orthodox victorious, although their reasons à priori may be refuted. But can they be refuted, will some say? I will answer, yes; the manner of introducing evil, under the empire of a sovereign being, infinitely good, infinitely holy, and infinitely powerful, is not only inexplicable but incomprehensible; and all that is objected against the reasons why this being has permitted evil, is more agreeable to natural light, and the ideas we have of order, than these reasons are. Let us consider well this passage of Lactantius, which contains an answer to an objection of Epicurus. Lactant. de Ira Dei, cap. xiii. ¹⁵

“God, says Epicurus, is either willing to remove evil, and is not able: or he is able, and not willing: or he is neither willing, nor able: or else he is both willing and able. If he be willing and not able, he must then be weak, which cannot be affirmed of God. If he be able and not willing, he must be envious, which is likewise contrary to the nature of God. If he be neither willing nor able, he must be both envious and weak, and consequently not God. If he be both willing and able, which only can agree with the notion of God, whence then proceeds evil? Or, why does he not remove it? I know, that the greatest part of philosophers, who assert a providence, are commonly embarrassed with this argument, and almost forced against their will to acknowledge that

God does not concern himself with the administration of the world, which is the very thing that Epicurus drives at. But we easily overthrow this formidable argument by clear reason. For God can do whatever he pleases, and there is no weakness or envy in him; consequently, he is able to remove evil but is not willing, and yet for all that, is not envious. He does not remove evil for this reason, because (as I have shewn) he bestows wisdom, and there is more good and satisfaction in wisdom, than there is painfulness in evil. By wisdom likewise we come to know God, and by that knowledge attain to immortality, which is the chief good. And therefore unless we first know evil, we shall not be able to know good. But neither Epicurus nor any other has observed this: if evil be removed, wisdom must also be removed; no trace of virtue will remain; because virtue consists in bearing with and overcoming the sharpness of evil. And so, for the small advantage of the removal of evil, we should be deprived of the greatest, the most real, and proper good. It is evident therefore, that all things, evil as well as good, were intended for the benefit of mankind.”

The whole strength of the objection could not be more sincerely represented: Epicurus himself could not have proposed it with greater clearness and strength. But the answer of Lactantius is pitiful, and it is not only weak, but full of errors, and perhaps of heresies. It supposes that God must produce evil, because otherwise he would not be able to communicate to us either wisdom or virtue, or the knowledge of what is good. Can any thing be shown more monstrous than this doctrine? Does it not overthrow all that Divines tell us about the happiness of Paradise, and the state of innocence? They tell us that Adam and Eve in this happy state felt, without any mixture of uneasiness, all the pleasures,

which that delicious and charming place, the garden of Eden, where God placed them, could afford them. They add, that if they had not sinned, they and all their posterity should have enjoyed this happiness, without being subject either to diseases or sorrows, and that neither the elements nor animals, had ever done them any harm. It was their sin that exposed them to cold and heat, to hunger and thirst, to pain and sorrow, and to the mischiefs which certain beasts do us. So far is it from being true, that virtue and wisdom cannot subsist in a man without physical evil, as Lactantius affirms, while on the contrary, it must be maintained, that man has been subject to this evil, only because he renounced virtue and wisdom. If the doctrine of Lactantius were good, we must necessarily suppose that the good angels are subject to a thousand inconveniences, and that the souls of the blessed do alternately pass from joy to sorrow; so that in the mansions of glory, and in the bosom of the beatific vision, none are secured from adversity. Nothing is more contrary to the unanimous sentiment of divines, and to right reason, than this doctrine. It is even true in sound philosophy, that it is no wise necessary that our soul should feel evil, to the end that it may relish what is good, and that it should pass successively from pleasure to pain, and from pain to pleasure, that it may be able to discern that pain is an evil, and that pleasure is a good thing. And thus Lactantius does not less oppose the light of nature, than the opinions of divines. We know by experience, that our soul cannot feel at one and the same time both pleasure and pain; it must therefore at first either have felt pain before pleasure, or pleasure before pain. If its first sensation were that of pleasure, it found that state to be agreeable, though it was ignorant of pain; and if its first sensation were that of pain, it found that state to be uneasy, although it was ignorant of pleasure. Suppose then that its first sensation lasted several years without interruption, you may conceive that during that time it was in an easy condition, or in one that was uneasy. And do not allege to me experience; do not tell me, that a pleasure which lasts long becomes insipid, and that pain in time becomes supportable; for I will answer you that this proceeds from a change in the organ, which makes that sensation which continues the same, as to kind, to be different as to degree. If you had at first a sensation of six degrees, it will not continue of six to the end of two hours, or to the end of a year but only of one degree, or of one fourth part of a degree. Thus custom blunts the edge of our sensations; their degrees correspond to the concussions of the parts of the brain, and this concussion is weakened by frequent repetitions, whence it comes to pass that the degrees of sensation are diminished. But if pain or joy were communicated to us in the same degree successively for a hundred years, we should be as unhappy or as happy the hundredth year as the first day; which plainly proves that a creature may be happy with a continued good, or unhappy with a continued evil; and that the alternative, which Lactantius speaks of, is a bad solution of the difficulty. It is not founded upon the nature of good and evil, nor upon the nature of the subject which receives them, nor upon the nature of the cause which produces them. Pleasure and pain are no less proper to be communicated the second moment than the first, and the third moment than the second, and so of all the rest. Our soul is also as susceptible of them after it has felt them one moment, as it was before it felt them, and God who gives them is no less capable of producing them the second time than the first. This is what we learn from the natural ideas we have of these objects. Christian theology confirms this invincibly, since is teaches us, that the torments of the damned shall be eternal and continued, and as sharp at the end of an hundred thousand years as the first day; and that on the contrary the pleasures of Paradise shall last eternally and continually, without ever abating. I would gladly know whether, supposing a thing which is very easy, that there were two suns in the world, whereof one should rise when the other sets, we must not conclude that darkness would be unknown to mankind. According to this fine philosophy of Lactantius, we must also conclude, that a man could not know the light, that he would not know it is day, or that he sees the objects before him.

What I have just now said, proves invincibly, I think, that there is no advantage to be gained, by representing that God has mingled good and evil, only because he foresaw that a pure and unmixed good would seem to us insipid in a little time. The opponent will answer, that this property is not contained in the idea we have of a good thing, and that it is directly contrary to the common doctrine about the happiness of Paradise. As to the experience which teaches us but too much; that the joys of this life are not felt, but in proportion as they deliver us from a troublesome state, and that they draw after them disgust, when they have continued a little while: they will maintain that this phœnomenon is inexplicable, unless we have recourse to the hypothesis of two principles. If we depend, will they say, only upon one cause, Almighty, infinitely good, and infinitely free, and which disposes universally of all beings, according to the good pleasure of his own will, we ought not to feel any evil, all our good ought to be pure, and we ought never to have the least disgust. The author of our being, if he be infinitely beneficent, ought to take a continual pleasure in making us happy, and preventing every thing that may disturb or diminish our joy; for it is a

character essentially contained in the idea of supreme goodness. The fibres of our brain cannot be the cause that God weakens our pleasures; for according to you, he is the only author of matter; he is Almighty, and nothing can hinder him from acting according to the full extent of his infinite goodness; he needs only will, that our pleasures should not depend upon the fibres of our brain; and if he wills that they should depend upon them, he can preserve these fibres eternally in the same state; he need only to will either that they should not wear out at all, or that the damage they suffer should be quickly repaired. You cannot therefore explain what we experience, but by the hypothesis of two principles. If we feel pleasure, it is the good principle that gives it to us; but if we do not feel it perfectly pure, and if we are quickly disgusted with it, it is because there is an ill principle that thwarts the good. The latter, to be just to him, makes our pains less grievous by custom, and gives us always some hopes in the greatest evils. This, and the good use that is often made of adversity, and the bad use that is often made of prosperity, are phœnomena which are admirably explained, according to the Manichean hypothesis. These are things which lead us to suppose, that the two principles made an agreement which reciprocally limits their operations. The good principle cannot do us all the good he desires: it was necessary that in order to do us a great deal of good, he should consent, that his adversary should do us as much evil; for without this consent the chaos would still have remained a chaos, and no creature would ever have felt what is good. Thus, supreme goodness finding it a better way for its own satisfaction, to see the world sometimes happy, and sometimes miserable, than never to see it happy, made an agreement which produced the mixture of good and evil we now see in mankind. By ascribing to your principle an almighty power, and the glory of enjoying eternity alone, you have deprived him, say the Manichees, of an attribute which goes before all the rest; for optimus, the best precedes always maximus the greatest, in the stile of the most learned nations, when they speak of God. You suppose, that having nothing to hinder him from loading his creatures with good things, he oppresses them with evils; and if any of them be advanced, it is that their fall may be the greater. We clear him from any guilt in all this matter, we explain without impeaching his goodness, all that can be said of the inconstancy of fortune, the jealousy of Nemesis, and the continual sport which Æsop makes the employment of God, who exalts things, says Æsop, that are low, and abases things that are high. He could obtain no more, say we, from his adversary: his goodness extended as far as it could; if he do us no more good, it is because he cannot; we have no reason therefore to complain.

Who will not admire and deplore the fate of our reason? Behold the Manichees, with an hypothesis altogether absurd and contradictory, explain what we experience, a hundred times better than the Orthodox do, with a supposition so just, so necessary, and so singularly true of one first principle, which is infinitely good and almighty.

Let us show, by another example, the little success of the fathers in the disputes against these Heretics, with respect to the origin of evil. Here follows a passage of St Basil: - - - “But to say that evil proceeded not from God, is a pious assertion; for nothing can arise from its contrary. But if evil be not innate, nor proceed from God, whence has it its origin? for that evil does exist, no man living will deny. I answer, that evil is not a living essence, and endued with soul; but a quality of the soul, contrary to virtue; planted in the slothful and lazy, because they

have fallen from good. Do not therefore look about, and inquire for evil, nor imagine a first principle of malignity, but let every one acknowledge himself the author of his own wickedness; for those things that happen to us, partly proceed from nature, as old age, and infirmity; partly come of themselves, as sudden accidents from external causes.... but partly we are within our own power, as to mortify our desires, to moderate our pleasures, to govern passion, or to lay hands on him that has done us an injury; to speak truth or untruth, to be of a meek and even temper, or to be puffed up with pride and arrogance. Do not therefore seek any where else for the principles of those things, which you are master of yourself; but know that what is properly evil, takes its rise from free will and choice.”

The German divine who relates this passage had reason to say, that this father granted to the Marcionites more than he ought; for he will not so much as acknowledge that God is the author of natural evil, such as sickness, and old age, and of a hundred things which proceed from external causes, and happen suddenly. Thus, to disentangle himself from a difficulty, he adopts errors, and perhaps even heresies. But there is another fault in his answer; he fancies he can extricate himself from this difficulty, by clearing providence; provided, he affirms, that vices have their original in the soul of man. How came he not to perceive that he shuns the difficulty? or that he gives for a solution of it the very thing wherein the principal difficulty consists? The pretence of Zoroaster, Plato, Plutarch, the Marcionites, and Manichees, and, in general, of all those who admit one principle naturally good, and another principle naturally evil, both eternal and independant, is, that without this supposition, no account can be given how evil came into the world. You answer, that it came into the world by man: but how can that be, since, according to you,

man is the workmanship of a being infinitely holy, and infinitely powerful? Ought not the work of such a cause to be good? Can it be any thing else but good? Is it not more impossible that darkness should proceed from light, than that the product of such a principle should be bad? There lies the difficulty. St Basil could not be ignorant of it. Why then does he say so coldly, that we must not search for evil but in die soul of man? But who put it there? The man himself, by abusing the grace of his Creator, who, being sovereign goodness itself, produced him in a state of innocence. If you answer thus, you fall into a petitio principii, begging the question. You dispute with a Manichee, who maintains that two contrary Creators concurred to the production of man, it and that man received from the good principle whatever good he has, and, from the bad principle, whatever he has of evil; and you answer his objections, by supposing that the Creator of man is one only, and infinitely good being. Is not this to give your own thesis for an answer? It is plain that St Basil disputes ill; but, as this is a thing that nonplusses all philosophy, he should have retired into his strong hold, that is, he should have proved, by the word of God, that the author of all things is but one, and that he is infinite in goodness and all sorts of perfections; and that man, coming out of his hands innocent and good, has lost his innocence and his goodness by his own fault. This is the origin of moral and physical evil. Let Marcion and all the Manichees reason as much as they please to show that, under a Providence infinitely good and holy, this fall of an innocent man could not happen, they argue against matter of fact, and consequently they make themselves ridiculous. I suppose always, that they are such people as may be reduced by arguments ad hominem, to acknowledge the divine authority of the Old Testament. For if one had to do with Zoroaster, or Plutarch, it would be another thing.

That you may see it is not without reason I urge, that we must only oppose to these sectaries this maxim, “Ab actu ad potentiam valet consequentia; - - - From matter of fact to possibility, the consequence is good and this short enthymem, “This has come to pass, therefore it is not repugnant to the holiness and ' goodness of God I observe that we cannot join issue in this dispute, upon any other foot, without some disadvantage. The reasons for the permission of sin, which are not taken from the mysteries revealed in scripture, have this defect, how good soever they be, that they may be opposed by other reasons more specious, and more agreeably to the ideas we have of order. For instance, if you say that God permitted sin to manifest his wisdom, which shines the more brightly by the disorders which the wickedness of men produces every day, than it would have done in a state of innocence; it may be answered, that this is to compare the Deity to a father who should suffer his children to break their legs, on purpose to show to all the city bis great art in setting their broken bones; or to a king who should suffer seditions and factions to increase through all his kingdom, that he might purchase the glory of quelling them. The conduct of this father and this monarch is so contrary to the clear and distinct ideas, according to which we judge of goodness and wisdom, and in general of the whole duty of a father and a king, that our reason cannot conceive how God can make use of the same. But, you will say, the ways of God are not our ways. Keep to that then, this is a text of scripture, and do not reason any more. Do not any more tell us that, without the fall of the first man, the justice and mercy of God would have remained unknown; for you will be answered, that there was nothing more easy

than to make man know these two attributes. The sole idea of a being infinitely perfect, clearly informs sinful man, that God possesses all the virtues that are worthy of a nature infinite in all respects. How much more would it have informed an innocent man, that God is infinitely just? But he had never punished any body; by this very thing his justice would have been known, this had been a continued act, a perpetual exercise of that virtue. None had deserved to be punished, and consequently the forbearing of all punishment would have been an exercise of justice. I desire you to answer me:—there are two princes, whereof one suffers his subjects to fall into misery, that he may deliver them, when they have sufficiently languished under it; and the other preserves them always in a prosperous state. Is not the latter much better, and more merciful, than the other? Those who teach the immaculate conception of the Virgin, prove demonstratively that God poured upon her his mercy, and the benefits of redemption, more than upon other people. We need not be metaphysicians to know this: a ploughman clearly perceives that it is a much greater goodness to hinder a man from falling into a ditch, than to let him fall in, and then take him out an hour after; and that it is much better to hinder an assassin from killing a man, than to break him on the wheel after he has been permitted to commit the murder.

Those who say that God permitted sin, because he could not hinder it without destroying free-will, which he had given to man, and which was the best present he had made him, venture very far. The reason they give is specious; there is in it something that appears great; but nevertheless it may be opposed by such reasons as are more suited to the capacity of all men, and more founded upon good sense and the ideas of order. Without having read the fine treatise of Seneca concerning benefits, any one knows

by the light of nature, that it is essential to a benefactor not to bestow favours which he knows will be abused in such a manner, that they will serve only to the ruin of him on whom they are bestowed. There is no enemy so inveterate, who would not upon these terms, load his enemy with favours. It is essential to a benefactor to spare nothing to make the person happy with his benefits, whom he honours with them. If he could confer on him the knowledge of making good use of them, and should refuse it him, he would very ill sustain the character of a benefactor; neither would he better sustain it, if being able to keep his client from abusing benefits, he should not hinder him by curing his bad inclinations; these are ideas which are known as well to the common people as to the philosophers. I confess that if we could not prevent the ill use of a favour, but by breaking the arms and legs of our clients, or by shackling their feet with irons in a dungeon, we might not be obliged to prevent it, it were better to refuse them the benefit; but if one can prevent it by changing the heart, and by giving a man a relish of good things, we ought to do it; and this is what God might easily do if he would. Observe well what Cicero says, in opposition to those who allege that it is not the fault of God, if men do not use aright his favours. “Huie loco sic soletis occurrere, non idcirco non optimè à nobis à diis esse provisum, quod multi eorum beneficio perversè uterentur: etiam patrimoniis multos malè uti: nec ob earn causam eos beneficium à patribus nullum habere. Quis istus negat? aut quae est in collatione ista similitudo? nec enim Herculi nocere Deianira voluit, cum ei tunicam, sanguine Centauri tinctam, dédit nec prodesse Phæreo Jasoni, is qui gladio vomicam ejus aperuit, quam sanare medici non potuerant. Multi enim, etiam cum obesse veilent, profuerunt et cum prodesse, obfuerunt. Ita non fit ex eo, quod datur, ut voluntas ejus; qui dederit, appareat: nec, si is, qui accepit, bene utitur idcirco is, qui dédit amice dedit Cicero, de Nat. Deorum, lib. iii. c. xxviii. ¹⁶ - - - To this you commonly answer, it does not follow that we are not very well taken care of by the Gods, because many abuse their benefits; for many people make a bad use of their patrimonies, and yet for all that, they are not deprived of their father’s kindness. Who denies that? or what resemblance is there in that comparison? For neither did Dejanira intend to hurt Hercules, when she gave him the coat dipped in the centaur’s blood; nor did that man design to do good to Jason, who opened his imposthume with a sword, which the physicians were not able to cure; for many people even when they intended to hurt, have done good; and when they intended to do good, have done hurt: and therefore the design of him who gives, does not appear by that which is given; and though he who receives it makes a right use of it, yet it does not follow that he who gave it, gave it as a friend.” There is no good mother, who having given her daughters leave to go to a ball, but would revoke that leave if she were sure that they would yield to enticements, and leave their virginity behind them; and every mother, who knowing that this would certainly come to pass, should nevertheless suffer them to go to a ball, being contented with exhorting them to virtue, and threatening them with her disgrace if they should not return maids, would at least, justly bring upon herself the blame of neither loving her daughters nor chastity. It would be in vain for her to say in her own justification, that she had no mind to restrain the liberty of her daughters, nor to show any distrust of them: she would be answered that this management was very preposterous, and savoured more of a provoked step-mother than of a mother; and that it had been better to keep her daughters in her sight, than to give them the privilege of liberty to such bad purposes, and to grant them such marks of her confidence. This discovers the rashness of those who assign for a reason, the regard which they say God showed to the free will of the first man. They had better believe and be silent, than allege such reasons as may be refuted by the examples I have just now made use of. Cotta in Cicero brings so many arguments against those who say, reason is a gift which the Gods bestowed upon man, that Cicero found himself unable to answer those difficulties; for if he had been able, he would have refuted them; his academic spirit was in its element when he could make it appear, that one may . dispute pro and con, in infinitum. Since therefore he has given no answer to the reasons of Cotta, we must believe that he could not do it: yet Cicero was one of the greatest geniuses that ever lived. Cotta having shown that reason is an accomplice in all crimes, and therefore the gods should have given it us, if they intended to do us a mischief, proposes to himself the common solution, which is, that men abuse die favours of heaven. “Sed urgetis identidem hominum esse istam culpam, non deorum . . . in hominum vitiis ais esse culpam.” Cicero replies, that the abuse should have been prevented, and that men should have had such a reason, as should have driven away whatever is evil; and that those cannot be excused who give what they know will prove pernicious.

The free-will of the first man, which was preserved to him sound and entire, in the circumstances wherein he was to make use of it to his own loss, to the ruin of mankind, to the eternal damnation of the greatest part of his posterity, and to the introduction of a terrible deluge of evils, of guilt, and punishment, was not a good gift. We shall never understand that this privilege could be preserved to him by an effect of goodness, and out of love for holiness. Those who say that it was necessary there should be free beings,

to the end that God might be loved with a love of choice, are conscious to themselves, that this hypothesis does not satisfy reason; for when it is foreseen that those free beings will choose not the love of God, but sin, we may plainly perceive, that the intended end is defeated, and that therefore it is no wise necessary that free-will should be preserved.

If the Manichees should go no further, they would renounce their principal advantages; for their most terrible objections are the following:—It cannot be conceived that the first man could receive from a good principle the faculty of doing ill. This faculty is vicious, and every thing that can produce evil is bad, since evil cannot proceed but from a bad cause; and therefore the free will of Adam proceeded from two contrary principles: inasmuch as he could take the right way, he depended upon a good principle; but inasmuch as he could embrace evil, he depended upon an ill principle. It is impossible to comprehend, that God did only permit sin; for a bare permission of sin added nothing to free-will, and was not a means to foresee, whether Adam would persevere in his innocence or fall from it. Besides, according to the idea we have of a created being, we cannot comprehend that it can be a principle of action, that it can move itself, and that receiving, in every moment of its duration, its existence and the existence of its faculties wholly from another cause, it should create in itself any modalities by a power peculiar to itself. These modalities must be either not distinct from the substance of the soul, as the new philosophers will have it, or distinct from the substance of the soul, as the Peripatetics affirm. If they be not distinct, they cannot be produced but by the cause which can produce the very substance of the soul; but it is manifest that man himself is not this cause, neither can he be. If they are distinct, then they are created beings, produced out of nothing, since they are not composed of the

soul, nor of any other pre-existent nature; they cannot therefore be produced, but by a cause that can create. Now all the sects of philosophy agree, that man is not, nor can be such a cause. Some think that the motion which excites him proceeds from some other cause, and that nevertheless he can stop it, and fix it upon a certain object. This is contradictory; since there is no less power required to stop that which is in motion, than to move that which is at rest. Seeing therefore a creature cannot be moved by a bare permission of acting, and has not in itself a principle of motion, it is absolutely necessary that God should move it; he must therefore do something else than barely permit man to sin. This may be proved by a new reason: namely, that it cannot be comprehended, that a bare permission should bring contingent events out of the class of things merely possible, nor that it should put the Deity in a capacity of being certainly sure that the creature will sin. A mere permission cannot be the foundation of the Divine prescience. This is what obliges the greatest part of divines to suppose that God has made a decree, which imports that the creature will sin, and which according to them is the foundation of prescience. Others think that the decree imports, that the creature shall be placed in such circumstances, wherein God has foreseen that it will sin. Thus some think that God foresaw the sin by reason of his decree; others, that he made the decree because he foresaw the sin. Howsoever this be explained, it follows clearly that God was willing that man should sin, and that he preferred this to the perpetual duration of innocence, which it was so easy for him to procure and ordain. Reconcile this if you can with the goodness he ought to have for his creatures, and the infinite love he ought to have for holiness.

Again, if you say with those that come nearer to a method that would justify providence, that God did

not foresee the fall of Adam, you will gain but little by it; for at least he knew, very certainly, that the first man run the hazard of losing his innocence, and introducing into the world all the evils of punishment and guilt, which followed his apostacy. Neither his goodness, nor his holiness, nor his wisdom could permit that he should run the hazard of these events; for our reason convinces us very evidently, that a mother who should suffer her daughters to go to a ball, when she knew most certainly that they would run a great hazard with respect to their honour, would show thereby, that she neither loved her daughters nor chastity; and if it be supposed that she has an infallible preservative against all temptations, and that she gives it not to her daughters when she sends them to a ball, it is most evident that she is guilty, and that she takes but little care that her daughters should preserve their virginity. Let us carry on the comparison a little further; if that mother should go to this ball, and through a window should see and hear, that one of her daughters defends herself but weakly in the corner of a closet against the solicitations of a young gallant; if even when she sees that her daughter is but one step from yielding to the desires of the tempter, she should not go then to assist her, and deliver her from the snare, would not every one have reason so say that she acts like a cruel step-mother, and that she would not scruple to sell the honour of her own daughter. This is a representation of the conduct which the Socinians attribute to God. They cannot say, that he knew the sin of the first man, but as a possible event; he knew all the particulars of the temptation, and he must needs have known a moment before Eve yielded, that she was going to ruin herself; he must, I say, have known it with such a certainty, as renders him inexcusable if he does not prevent the evil, and allows him not to say, “I had reason to believe that this would not happen; I had still great hopes.” There are no people of so little experience, but without seeing what passes in the heart, and knowing the matter any otherwise than by signs, may be sure that a woman is ready to yield, if they see through a window how she defends herself, when her fall is near. Before the moment of her consent, there are certain indications, wherein they are not deceived. How much greater reason have we to think that God, who knew all the thoughts of Eve as they came into her mind (this knowledge the Socinians do not deny him) could not doubt but she was just ready to yield. He would therefore let her sin, and this even at the time when he foresaw she would certainly sin. The sin of Adam was yet more certainly foreseen; for the example of Eve gave some light the better to foresee the fall of her husband. If God had purposed to preserve man and his innocence, and to prevent all the miseries which were to be the infallible consequence of sin, would he not at least have fortified the husband, after the wife had fallen? Would he not have given him another wife, sound and perfect, instead of that which had suffered herself to be seduced? Let us say, therefore, that the Socinian system, by depriving God of prescience, reduces him to slavery, and to a pitiful form of government, and does not remove the grand difficulty which it should remove, and which forces these heretics to deny the foreknowledge of contingent events.”

I refer you to a professor of Divinity yet living, Jurieu. ¹⁷ who has proved, as clear as the day, that neither the method of the Scotists, nor that of the Molinists, nor that of the Remonstrants, nor that of the Universalists, nor that of the Pajonists, nor that of father Mallebranche, nor that of the Lutherans, nor that of the Socinians, can solve the objections of those who impute to God the introduction of

sin, or who pretend, that it is consistent with his goodness, with his holiness, or his justice; insomuch that this professor finding nothing better elsewhere, continues in the hypothesis of St Augustin, which is the same with that of Luther and Calvin, and of the Thomists and Jansenists; I say he continues there, being embarrassed with the astonishing difficulties he has set forth, and oppressed with their weight. Since Luther and Calvin appeared, I do not think that a year has passed wherein they have not been accused of making God the author of all sin. The professor of whom I speak, confesses, that with respect to Luther, the accusation is just; the Lutherans at this day pretend the same thing as to Calvin. The Roman Catholics pretend the same thing as to both. The Jesuits pretend it as to Jansenius. Those who are a little equitable and moderate, do not take it to be an act of insincerity in their adversary, when he protests, that he does not at all impute to God, the sin of man, that he does not at all make him the author of it; they are willing to grant that he does not expressly teach it, and that all the consequences of his doctrine are not perceived by him; but they add, that "protestatio facto contraria nihil valet, - - - a protestation contrary to fact signifies nothing,” and that if he will take the pains to determine precisely, what was necessary for God to have done that he might be the author of the sin of Adam, he will find that according to his doctrine, God has done all that was necessary in order to that end. You therefore, add they, act quite contrary to Epicurus; he denied in effect that there were any gods, and yet he said that there were gods. You, on the contrary, deny in your words that God is the author of sin, but in effect you teach it.

Let us come at last to the text of this remark. The disputes which have arisen in the west among

Christians since the reformation, have so clearly shown that a man does not know which side to take, when he would solve the difficulties about the origin of evil, that a Manichee at this day would be more terrible than in former times, because he would refute every party by each other. You have exhausted, would he say, all the forces of your wit; you have invented the “scientia media,” which like a “Deus è Machina” (a machine-deity) is brought in to clear your chaos. This invention is chimerical; it cannot be conceived, that God should foresee things future otherwise than in his decrees, or in the necessity of causes. It is no less inconceivable in metaphysics, than it is inconceivable in ethics, that he who is goodness and holiness itself should be the author of sin. I refer you to the Jansenists: see how they run down your scientia media, both by direct proofs, and by retorting your arguments; for it does not hinder that all the sins and all the miseries of man proceed from the free choice of God; it does not take off the force of the parallel in comparing God, (absit verbo blasphemia, - - - with reverence be it spoken), to a mother who knowing certainly that her daughter would yield up her honour, if in such a place and at such a time she were solicited by such a man should manage the interview herself, carry her daughter to it, and leave her there to her own conduct. The Socinians overwhelmed with the objection, endeavour to extricate themselves by denying prescience, but they have the mortification to see that their hypothesis vilifies the government of God, without clearing him of the guilt, and that it does not avoid the comparison of this mother, more or less. I refer them to the Protestants, who overthrow and utterly confound them. As to absolute decrees, the certain cause of prescience, see, I pray you, after what manner the Molinists and the Remonstrants oppose them. There is a divine, as resolute as Bartolus, who confesses almost with tears in his eyes, that there is no body more perplexed than he with the difficulties of these decrees, and that he continues in this condition, only because when he had a mind to go over to qualified methods, he found himself still oppressed with objections. Jurieu’s Judgment on Providence and Grace. ¹⁸ He enlarges with great strength upon all this in another work, and you cannot deny but he refutes invincibly all those methods; and consequently you have no resource left, unless you will adopt my system of the two principles. By this means you will extricate yourself from this trouble, all the difficulties will vanish away; you will fully justify the good principle, and you only pass from one Manicheism less reasonable to another more reasonable; for if you examine your system carefully, you will acknowledge, that you as well as I admit two principles, the one of good, and the other of evil; but instead of placing them as I do, in two subjects, you join them together in one and the same substance, which is monstrous and impossible. The one only principle which you admit, determined from all eternity, according to you, that man should sin, and that the first sin should be infectious; that it should produce without end and without intermission all imaginable crimes over the face of the whole earth. In consequence he prepared for mankind in this life all the miseries that can be conceived, such as pestilence, war, famine, pain, vexation, and after this life a Hell, wherein all men almost shall be eternally tormented, after such a manner as makes our hair stand on end, when we read the descriptions of it. If such a principle is besides perfectly good, and loves holiness infinitely, must we not acknowledge, that the same God is at one and the same time, perfectly good and perfectly bad, and that he loves vice no less than he does virtue? Now is it not more reasonable to divide these two opposite qualities, and to give all that is good to one principle, and all that is bad to another principle? Human history will prove nothing to the disadvantage of the good principle. I do not say, as you do, that of his own will, and only because it was his good pleasure, he subjected mankind to sin and misery, when nothing hindered him from making them holy and happy; I suppose he did not consent to this but to shun a greater evil, and that he did it as it were in his own defence. This clears him of guilt. He saw that the evil principle would destroy all; he opposed him as much as he could, and by agreement, he obtained the state to which things are now reduced. He acted like a monarch, who to avoid the ruin of all his dominions, is obliged to sacrifice one part of them to the good of the other: this is a grand inconvenience, and which at first frightens human reason, to talk of a first principle, and a necessary being, as of a thing that does not all it has a mind to, and which is forced for want of power to submit to conjunctures; but it is yet a greater imperfection to resolve voluntarily to do evil, when one can do good.—This is what might be said by this Manichee, and a good use may be made of these remarks, to humble the reason of man, by shewing him with what force the most foolish heresies may confound it, and embroil the most fundamental truths.

And after all the Orthodox seem to admit of the two principles. It has been a constant opinion amongst Christians from the beginning, that the devil is the author of all false religions; that he moves the Heretics to dogmatise, and inspires men with errors, superstitions, schisms, lewdness, avarice, intemperance; in a word, with all the crimes that are committed among men: that he deprived Adam and Eve of their innocence; whence it follows that he is the

cause of moral evil, and of all the miseries of man. He is therefore the first principle of evil; but because he is not eternal or uncreated, he is not the first ill principle in the sense of the Manichees, which afforded those Heretics I know not what matter of boasting and insulting over the Orthodox. They might have told them, your doctrine is much more injurious to the good God than ours, for you make him the cause of the ill principle; you assert that he produced him, and that though he could have stopped him at the first step he made, yet he permitted him to usurp so great a power in this world, that mankind having been divided into two cities, that of God and that of the devil, the first was always very small, and even so small for many ages, that it had not two inhabitants, when the other had two millions. We are not obliged to inquire into the cause of the wickedness of our evil principle; for when an uncreated being is so or so, one cannot say why it is so; it is its nature; one must necessarily stop there; but as for the qualities of a creature, one ought to inquire into the reason of them, and it cannot be found but in its cause. You must therefore say that God is the author of the devil’s malice, that he himself produced it such as it is, or sowed the seeds of it in the soil that he created; which is a thousand times more dishonorable to God, than to say that he is not the only necessary and independent being. This brings in again the above-mentioned objections concerning the fall of the first man; it is not therefore necessary to insist any longer upon it. We must humbly acknowledge that philosophy is here at a stand, and that its weakness ought to lead us to the light of revelation, where we shall find a sure and stedfast anchor. I may remark here that these Heretics made an ill use of some passages of the holy Scripture, wherein the devil is called the prince, and the god of this world.

The more we reflect, the more we find that the

natural light ties and entangles this gordian knot. I found it so by experience as I was reading this article again to make it ready for a second edition. Some new thoughts came into my mind, which convinced me anew, and more strongly than ever, that the best answer that can be naturally returned to the question, “Why did God permit that man should sin?” is this, “I do not know, I only believe that he had some reasons for it very worthy of his infinite wisdom, but they are incomprehensible to me.” You will stop with such an answer the most obstinate disputers; for if they will go on they must talk alone, and so they will soon hold their tongues. If you should enter the lists with them, and undertake to maintain that the inviolable privileges of free-will have been the true reason which moved God to permit men to sin, you would be forced to answer their objections to their satisfaction; and I do not know how you could Well do it, for they might object two things which seem most evident to reason:—They might say,— first, that God having caused his creatures to exist by an effect of his goodness, he gave them also, under the character of a bountiful cause, all the perfections which are proper for every kind. We must therefore say that he expressed a greater love for those which received very, excellent qualities from him, than for those who received less excellent qualities. He has therefore out of a particular goodness bestowed freewill upon men, since that quality raises them above all the beings that are upon earth. But we cannot conceive, how a gracious and beneficent being can make a considerable present, without designing to increase thereby the happiness of those who receive it, and consequently that bountiful being ought to put them in a condition of getting such an advantage by it, and keep them, if it be possible, from being utterly ruined and destroyed by it. But if there be no ether way of preventing that, than by revoking the gift, that gift ought to be revoked; whereby the character of patron and benefactor may be much better preserved than by any other means. This is not changing our mind with respect to the donor, but retaining without any shadow of variation, the goodwill wherewith that present was made him. The same goodness which moves a deity to give a thing which he thinks will make happy those that shall enjoy it, moves him likewise to take it away as soon as he observes that it makes them unhappy; and if he have time enough, and a sufficient power, he will not put off the withdrawing of his gift till it proves the cause of misery, but he will take it away before it has done any harm. What has been said follows from the ideas of order, and the notions whereby we may judge of the essence and characters of goodness, in whatever subject it is to be found, whether in the creator or in a creature, a father, master, or king: thence comes this dilemma; either God has given free-will to men by an effect of his goodness, or without any goodness. You cannot say he did it without any goodness; you therefore say that he has done it with great goodness; but it necessarily results that he should have deprived them of it at any rate, rather than stay till it should prove their eternal damnation by the production of sin, which is a monster he essentially abhors; and if he have been so patient as to leave so dismal a present in their hands, till the evil happened, it is a sign either that his goodness was altered, even before they left the right way, which you dare not say; or that free-will was not given them out of goodness, which is against the supposition granted in the above-mentioned dilemma.

Regard ought to be had to a strong obligation; it should never be dispensed with but in cases of necessity; but men in such cases ought to have no such regard. If a son should see his father ready to throw himself out at the window either in a fit of frenzy, or

because he is troubled in his mind, he would do well to chain him if he could not restrain him otherwise. If a queen should fall into the water, any footman that should get her out of it, either by embracing her, or taking her by the hair, though he should pluck off above one half of it, would do a very good action; she would not certainly complain of his want of respect to her. If any one should suffer a lady finely dressed to fall down a precipice, would it. not be a very foolish excuse to say, that it was impossible to stop her without spoiling her ribbons and headdress? Upon such an occasion as that, restraint and violence are an effect of goodness, and if a man were to be snatched even against his will out of the jaws of death, it would be a piece of charity to do it, though you should run the hazard of putting one of his limbs out of joint, if he could not be saved any other way; and that man, when his passion is over, will not fail to thank you for it. The maxim, that to save a man against his will, who would destroy himself, is the same thing as to kill him, is of no use in this case; and the greatest favourers of toleration, will tell you that the pretended command, “Compel them to come in,” should be executed in a literal sense, if the only safe and infallible way of saving heretics, were to make them go to the Protestant church, or to mass, with a cudgel in our hands.

It clearly appears from all these things, that they who would submit to the judgment of reason the conduct of the divine providence, with respect to the permission of the first sin, would infallibly lose their cause, if they had nothing to say but that the privileges of free-will ought not to be violated. They would be answered, how can you conceive that God is the father of men, and yet say that he had rather save them the short and inconsiderable trouble of forcing them to renounce an agreeable conversation, wherein they were ready to make an ill use of their liberty, than prevent their eternal damnation,

which they incur by the ill use of their free-will? Where do you find such ideas of paternal goodness? To have a regard to the free-will of a man, and carefully to abstain from laying any restraint upon his inclination, when he is going to lose his innocence for ever, and to be eternally damned,—do you call that a lawful observation of the privileges of liberty? You would be less unreasonable, if you should say to a man who gets a fall near you and breaks his leg, “that which hindered us from preventing your fell, is that we were afraid to undo some folds of your gown; we had so great a respect for its symmetry, that we would not attempt to discompose it, and we thought it was much better to let you run the hazard of breaking your bones. ”

The second thing which I have to propose will give more trouble to the defendants than the other. I have argued hitherto upon this principle; when those whom we love cannot be preserved from death, or infamy, or some other great evil, unless we Make them feel a lesser pain, we are obliged to make them feel it. To indulge them in their capricious or bad inclinations, would be rather an act of cruelty than of goodness; and as they would infallibly be angry, as soon as they come to know the consequences of it, so they would be ready to thank those who did hurt them so much for their good. The evidence of these propositions is obvious to every body, and it cannot be doubted that Adam and Eve would have looked upon God’s restraint to keep them from falling, as a new favour as great as the precedent.

This is what the principles of my first observation run upon; but now I take another way: I grant to the adversaries all their demands; let them say that seeing man had received the privilege of liberty, he was to have the entire possession and use of it, and no manner of restraint was to be put upon him. Let them say it was not a proper time to save a man by

pulling him by the arm, or by the hair, by throwing him upon the ground, and saying to him, “it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.” Let them assert that the free will of man was a barrier altogether inviolable, and a privilege which it was not lawful to strike at. I will grant it. But was there no other means of preventing the fall of man? God was not to oppose a corporal motion; which is a troublesome opposition; a mere act of the will was the thing in question. But all the philosophers say that the will cannot be forced, “Voluntas non potest cogi,” and it it a contradiction to say that a volition is forced, for every act of the will is essentially voluntary. Now it is infinitely more easy for God to imprint in the souls of men such an act of the will as he thinks fit, than it is for us to fold a napkin, therefore, &c. here is another observation more forcible still: All divines own that God can infallibly produce a good act of the will in a human soul without depriving it of the use of liberty. A preventing delectation, the suggestion of an idea which weakens the impression of the tempting object, and a thousand other preliminary means of acting upon the mind and the sensitive soul, move infallibly the rational soul to make a good use of its liberty, and to follow the right way without being invincibly forced to it. Calvin would not deny it with respect to the soul of Adam, during the time of innocency, and all the divines of the Church of Rome, without excepting the Jansenists, own it with respect to man considered as a sinner. They acknowledge that his actions may be meritorious, though he acts only by a grace that is either efficacious by itself, or sufficient in such a degree that it never fails to produce its effect. They must therefore acknowledge that a divine help so seasonably bestowed upon Adam, and so tempered as to have infallibly prevented his fall, would have been very consistent with the use of his liberty, and without proving any restraint upon, or being disagreeable to him, would have left sufficient room for merit.

Thus the defendants are driven from all their entrenchments. Perhaps their last answer will be, that God owes nothing to his creatures, and that he was not bound to bestow a necessitating or infallible grace upon them. But why then did they say before, that he was to have a regard to human liberty? If he were obliged to preserve that prerogative of men, he must needs owe something to his own work. But not to insist upon that argument ad hominem; one may answer them, that if he owe nothing to his creatures, he is altogether bound to himself, and can do nothing against his essence. But it is essential to the holiness of God, and to his infinite and almighty goodness, not to suffer the introduction of moral and physical evil.

Well, will they reply at last,"but shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus?” This is well said: we should have stopped there. We are come again to the beginning of the lists; we had better have remained there, for it is needless to engage in a dispute, if after having run for some time, we must at last shut up ourselves in our own thesis. The doctrine which the Manichees oppose, ought to be looked upon by the orthodox as a truth, clearly revealed; and since it must at last be confessed, that the causes and reasons of it cannot be apprehended, it is better to own it from the very beginning, and stopping there, look upon the objections of philosophers as vain wrangling, to which nothing is to be opposed to them but silence, and the shield of faith.—Art. Paulicians.