where he is concerned. Those are rash and dangerous
expressions, whereunto some have been led astray to the discredit of the
attributes of God. For if such were the case there would be no reason for
praising his goodness and his justice: rather would it be as if the most
wicked spirit, the Prince of evil genii, the evil principle of the
Manichaeans, were the sole master of the universe, just as I observed
before. What means would there be of distinguishing the true God from the
false God of Zoroaster if all things depended upon the caprice of an
arbitrary power and there were neither rule nor consideration for anything
whatever?

38. It is therefore more than evident that nothing compels us to commit
ourselves to a doctrine so strange, since it suffices to say that we [96]
have not enough knowledge of the facts when there is a question of
answering probabilities which appear to throw doubt upon the justice and
the goodness of God, and which would vanish away if the facts were well
known to us. We need neither renounce reason in order to listen to faith
nor blind ourselves in order to see clearly, as Queen Christine used to
say: it is enough to reject ordinary appearances when they are contrary to
Mysteries; and this is not contrary to reason, since even in natural things
we are very often undeceived about appearances either by experience or by
superior reasons. All that has been set down here in advance, only with the
object of showing more plainly wherein the fault of the objections and the
abuse of reason consists in the present case, where the claim is made that
reason has greatest force against faith: we shall come afterwards to a more
exact discussion of that which concerns the origin of evil and the
permission of sin with its consequences.

39. For now, it will be well to continue our examination of the important
question of the use of reason in theology, and to make reflexions upon what
M. Bayle has said thereon in divers passages of his works. As he paid
particular attention in his _Historical and Critical Dictionary_ to
expounding the objections of the Manichaeans and those of the Pyrrhonians,
and as this procedure had been criticized by some persons zealous for
religion, he placed a dissertation at the end of the second edition of this
_Dictionary_, which aimed at showing, by examples, by authorities and by
reasons, the innocence and usefulness of his course of action. I am
persuaded (as I have said above)