l must no less be laid to the
account of God, who has permitted it and who has co-operated therein. He
states it as a maxim that for one difficulty more or less one must not
abandon a system. This he advances especially in favour of the methods of
the strict and the dogma of the Supralapsarians. For he supposes that one
can subscribe to their opinion, although he leaves all the difficulties in
their entirety, because the other systems, albeit they put an end to some
of the difficulties, cannot meet them all. I hold that the true system I
have expounded satisfies all. Nevertheless, even were that not so, I
confess that I cannot relish this maxim of M. Bayle's, and I should prefer
a system which would remove a great portion of the difficulties, to one
which would meet none of them. And the consideration of the wickedness of
men, which brings upon them well-nigh all their misfortunes, shows at least
that they have no right to complain. No justice need trouble itself over
the origin of a scoundrel's wickedness when it is only a question of
punishing him: it is quite another matter when it is a question of
prevention. One knows well that disposition, upbringing, conversation, and
often chance itself, have much share in that origin: is the man any the
less deserving of punishment?

265. I confess that there still remains another difficulty. If God is not
bound to account to the wicked for their wickedness, it seems as if he owes
to himself, and to those who honour him and love him, justification for his
course of action with regard to the permission of vice and crime. But God
has already given that satisfaction, as far as it is needed here on earth:
by granting us the light of reason he has bestowed upon us the means
whereby we may meet all difficulties. I hope that I have made it plain in
this discourse, and have elucidated the matter in the preceding portion of
these Essays, almost as far as it can be done through general arguments.
Thereafter, the permission of sin being justified, the other evils [290]
that are a consequence thereof present no further difficulty. Thus also I
am justified in restricting myself here to the evil of guilt to account for
the evil of punishment, as Holy Scripture does, and likewise well-nigh all
the Fathers of the Church and the Preachers. And, to the end that none may
say that is only good _per la predica_, it is enough to consider that,
after the solutions I have given, nothing must seem mor