alterable or inevitable in morals; it will have been just as
possible for God to command people to be vicious as to command them to be
virtuous; and one will have no certainty that the moral laws will not one
day be abrogated, as the ceremonial laws of the Jews were. This, in a word,
leads us straight to the belief that God was the free author, not only of
goodness and of virtue, but also of truth and of the essence of things.
That is what certain of the Cartesians assert, and I confess that their
opinion (see the Continuation of _Divers Thoughts on the Comet_, p. 554)
might be of some avail in certain circumstances. Yet it is open to dispute
for so many reasons, and subject to consequences so troublesome (see
chapter 152 of the same Continuation) that there are scarcely any extremes
it were not better to suffer rather than plunge into that one. It opens the
door to the most exaggerated Pyrrhonism: for it leads to the assertion that
this proposition, three and three make six, is only true where and during
the time when it pleases God; that it is perhaps false in some parts of the
universe; and that perhaps it will be so among men in the coming year.[240]
All that depends on the free will of God could have been limited to certain
places and certain times, like the Judaic ceremonies. This conclusion will
be extended to all the laws of the Decalogue, if the actions they command
are in their nature divested of all goodness to the same degree as the
actions they forbid.'

181. To say that God, having resolved to create man just as he is, could
not but have required of him piety, sobriety, justice and chastity, because
it is impossible that the disorders capable of overthrowing or disturbing
his work can please him, that is to revert in effect to the common opinion.
Virtues are virtues only because they serve perfection or prevent the
imperfection of those who are virtuous, or even of those who have to do
with them. And they have that power by their nature and by the nature of
rational creatures, before God decrees to create them. To hold a different
opinion would be as if someone were to say that the rules of proportion and
harmony are arbitrary with regard to musicians because they occur in music
only when one has resolved to sing or to play some instrument. But that is
exactly what is meant by being essential to good music: for those rules
belong to it already in the ideal state, even when none yet thinks of
singing, since i