even conceive the
notion in their heads, or prove its reality by an example in things) one
will easily escape from a labyrinth whose unhappy Daedalus was the human
mind. That labyrinth has caused infinite confusion, as much with the
ancients as with those of later times, even so far as to lead men into the
absurd error of the Lazy Sophism, which closely resembles fate after the
Turkish fashion. I do not wonder if in reality the Thomists and the
Jesuits, and even the Molinists and the Jansenists, agree together on this
matter more than is supposed. A Thomist and even a wise Jansenist will
content himself with certain determination, without going on to necessity:
and if someone goes so far, the error mayhap will lie only in the word. A
wise Molinist will be content with an indifference opposed to necessity,
but such as shall not exclude prevalent inclinations.

368. These difficulties, however, have greatly impressed M. Bayle, who[346]
was more inclined to dwell on them than to solve them, although he might
perhaps have had better success than anyone if he had thought fit to turn
his mind in that direction. Here is what he says of them in his
_Dictionary_, art. 'Jansenius', lit. G, p. 1626: 'Someone has said that the
subject of Grace is an ocean which has neither shore nor bottom. Perhaps he
would have spoken more correctly if he had compared it to the Strait of
Messina, where one is always in danger of striking one reef while
endeavouring to avoid another.

_Dextrum Scylla latus, laevum implacata Charybdis_
_Obsidet._

Everything comes back in the end to this: Did Adam sin freely? If you
answer yes, then you will be told, his fall was not foreseen. If you answer
no, then you will be told, he is not guilty. You may write a hundred
volumes against the one or the other of these conclusions, and yet you will
confess, either that the infallible prevision of a contingent event is a
mystery impossible to conceive, or that the way in which a creature which
acts without freedom sins nevertheless is altogether incomprehensible.'

369. Either I am greatly mistaken or these two alleged
incomprehensibilities are ended altogether by my solutions. Would to God it
were as easy to answer the question how to cure fevers, and how to avoid
the perils of two chronic sicknesses that may originate, the one from not
curing the fever, the other from curing it wrongly. When one asserts that a
free event cannot be foreseen, one is confusin