tient, at the expense of his life. The
author replies that providence does what wisdom and goodness require, and
that the good which accrues is greater than the evil. If God had not given
reason to man there would have been no man at all, and God would be like a
physician who killed someone in order to prevent his falling ill. One may
add that it is not reason which is harmful in itself, but the absence of
reason; and when reason is ill employed we reason well about means, but not
adequately about an end, or about that bad end we have proposed to
ourselves. Thus it is always for lack of reason that one does an evil deed.
The author also puts forward the objection made by Epicurus in the book by
Lactantius on the wrath of God. The terms of the objection are more or less
as follows. Either God wishes to banish evils and cannot contrive to do so,
in which case he would be weak; or he can abolish them, and will not, which
would be a sign of malignity in him; or again he lacks power and also will,
which would make him appear both weak and jealous; or finally he can and
will, but in this case it will be asked why he then does not banish evil,
if he exists? The author replies that God cannot banish evil, that he does
not wish to either, and that notwithstanding he is neither malicious [441]
nor weak. I should have preferred to say that he can banish evil, but that
he does not wish to do so absolutely, and rightly so, because he would then
banish good at the same time, and he would banish more good than evil.
Finally our author, having finished his learned work, adds an Appendix, in
which he speaks of the Divine Laws. He fittingly divides these laws into
natural and positive. He observes that the particular laws of the nature of
animals must give way to the general laws of bodies, that God is not in
reality angered when his laws are violated, but that order demanded that he
who sins should bring an evil upon himself, and that he who does violence
to others should suffer violence in his turn. But he believes that the
positive laws of God rather indicate and forecast the evil than cause its
infliction. And that gives him occasion to speak of the eternal damnation
of the wicked, which no longer serves either for correction or example, and
which nevertheless satisfies the retributive justice of God, although the
wicked bring their unhappiness upon themselves. He suspects, however, that
these punishments of the wicked bring some advant