rehend how the creatures, who are not the authors of their own
existence, can be the authors of their own actions, but, at the same time,
inadmissible to think of God as the cause of evil. He seeks only to show
the indemonstrability and incomprehensibility of freedom, not to reject it.
For he sees in it the condition of morality, and calls attention to
the fact that the difficulties in which those who deny freedom involve
themselves are far greater than those of their opponents. He shows himself
entirely averse to the determinism and pantheism of Spinoza.]

He who seeks to refute skepticism must produce a criterion of truth. If
such exists, it is certainly that advanced by Descartes, the evidence, the
evident clearness of a principle. Well, then, the following principles pass
for evident: That one, who does not exist, can have no responsibility for
an evil action; that two things, which are identical with the same thing,
are identical with each other; that I am the same man to-day that I was
yesterday. Now, the revealed doctrines of original sin and of the Trinity
show that the first and second of these axioms are false, and the Church
doctrine of the preservation of the world as a continuous creation, that
the last principle is uncertain. Thus if not even self-evidence furnishes
us a criterion of truth, we must conclude that none whatever exists.
Further, in regard to the origin of the world from a single principle, its
creation by God, we find this supported, no doubt, both by the conclusions
of the pure reason and by the consideration of nature, but controvened by
the fact of evil, by the misery and wickedness of man. Is it conceivable
that a holy and benevolent God has created so unhappy and wicked a being?

Bayle's motives in defending faith against reason were, on the one hand,
his personal piety, on the other, his conviction of the unassailable purity
of Christian ethics. All the sects agree in regard to moral principles, and
it is this which assures us of the divinity of the Christian revelation.
Nevertheless, he does not conceal from himself the fact that possession of
the theoretical side of religion is far from being a guarantee of practice
in conformity with her precepts. It is neither true that faith alone leads
to morality nor that unbelief is the cause of immorality. A state composed
of atheists would be not at all impossible, if only strict punishments and
strict notions of honor were insisted upon.

The