This
position is a little different from that of M. Jurieu, but both agree in
this sentiment, that the damned are themselves the cause of the
continuation of their torments. M. le Clerc's Origenist does not entirely
differ from this opinion when he says in the _Select Library_ (vol. 7, p.
341): 'God, who foresaw that man would fall, does not condemn him on that
account, but only because, although he has the power to recover himself, he
yet does not do so, that is, he freely retains his evil ways to the end of
his life.' If he carries this reasoning on beyond this life, he will
ascribe the continuation of the pains of the wicked to the continuation of
their guilt.

269. M. Bayle says (_Reply to the Questions of a Provincial_, ch. 175, p.
1188) 'that this dogma of the Origenist is heretical, in that it teaches
that damnation is not founded simply on sin, but on voluntary impenitence':
but is not this voluntary impenitence a continuation of sin? I would not
simply say, however, that it is because man, having the power to recover
himself, does not; and would wish to add that it is because man does not
take advantage of the succour of grace to aid him to recover himself. But
after this life, though one assume that the succour ceases, there is always
in the man who sins, even when he is damned, a freedom which renders him
culpable, and a power, albeit remote, of recovering himself, even though it
should never pass into action. And there is no reason why one may not say
that this degree of freedom, exempt from necessity, but not exempt from
certainty, remains in the damned as well as in the blessed. Moreover, the
damned have no need of a succour that is needed in this life, for they know
only too well what one must believe here.

270. The illustrious prelate of the Anglican Church who published recently
a book on the origin of evil, concerning which M. Bayle made some
observations in the second volume of his _Reply_, speaks with much subtlety
about the pains of the damned. This prelate's opinion is presented
(according to the author of the _Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres_,
June 1703) as if he made 'of the damned just so many madmen who will feel
their miseries acutely, but who will nevertheless congratulate themselves
on their own behaviour, and who will rather choose to be, and to be that
which they are, than not to be at all. They will love their state, unhappy
as it will be, even as angry people, lovers, the ambiti