er when he has the cunning to sap the very
foundations of our security in written documents. But one will have greater
indulgence for a great passion, because it is nearer to madness. The Romans
punished with the utmost severity the priests of the God Apis, when these
had prostituted the chastity of a noble lady to a knight who loved her to
distraction, making him pass as their god; while it was found enough to
send the lover into exile. But if someone had done evil deeds without
apparent reason and without appearance of passion the judge would be
tempted to take him for a madman, especially if it proved that he was given
to committing such extravagances often: this might tend towards reduction
of the penalty, rather than supplying the true grounds of wickedness and
punishment. So far removed are the principles of our opponents from the
practice of the tribunals and from the general opinion of men.

16. Thirdly, the distinction between physical evil and moral evil will
still remain, although there be this in common between them, that they have
their reasons and causes. And why manufacture new difficulties for oneself
concerning the origin of moral evil, since the principle followed in the
solution of those which natural evils have raised suffices also to account
for voluntary evils? That is to say, it suffices to show that one could not
have prevented men from being prone to errors, without changing the [421]
constitution of the best of systems or without employing miracles at every
turn. It is true that sin makes up a large portion of human wretchedness,
and even the largest; but that does not prevent one from being able to say
that men are wicked and deserving of punishment: else one must needs say
that the actual sins of the non-regenerate are excusable, because they
spring from the first cause of our wretchedness, which is original sin.
Fourthly, to say that the soul becomes passive and that man is not the true
cause of sin, if he is prompted to his voluntary actions by their objects,
as our author asserts in many passages, and particularly ch. 5, sect. 1,
sub-sect. 3, Sec. 18, is to create for oneself new senses for terms. When the
ancients spoke of that which is [Greek: eph' hemin], or when we speak of
that which depends upon us, of spontaneity, of the inward principle of our
actions, we do not exclude the representation of external things; for these
representations are in our souls, they are a portion of the modif