e ought to have given them the means of
avoiding it; if he could not prevent them from doing ill, he has
consented to the ill they have done; if he has consented, he should
not be offended; if he is offended, or if he punish them for the evil
they have done with his permission, he is unjust and cruel; if he
suffer them to rush on to their destruction, he is bound afterwards to
take them to himself; and he cannot with reason find fault with them
for the abuse of their liberty, in being deceived or seduced by the
objects which he himself had placed in their way to seduce them, to
tempt them, and to determine their wills to do evil.[4]

[4] See what Bayle says, _Dict. Crit._, art. _Origene_, Rem. E., art.
_Pauliciens_, Rem. E., F., M., and tom. iij. of the _Reponses aux
Questions d'un Provincial_.

What would you say of a father who should give to his children, in the
infancy of age, and when they were without experience, the liberty of
satisfying their disordered appetites, till they should convince
themselves of their evil tendency? Would not such a parent be in the
right to feel uneasy at the abuse which they should make of their
liberty which he had given them? Would it not be accounted malice in
this parent, who should have foreseen what was to happen, not to have
furnished his children with the capacity of directing their own
conduct so as to avoid the evils they might be assailed with? Would it
not show in him the height of madness were he to punish them for the
evil which he had done, and the chagrin which they occasioned him?
Would it not be to himself that we should ascribe the sottishness and
wickedness of his children?

You see, then, the points of view under which this system of men's
free will shows us the Deity. This free will becomes a present the
most dangerous, since it puts man in the condition of doing evil that
is truly frightful. We may thence conclude that this system, far from
justifying God, makes him capable of malice, imprudence, and
injustice. But this is to overturn all our ideas of a being perfectly,
nay, infinitely wise and good, consenting to punish his creatures for
sins which he gave them the power of committing, or, which is the
same, suffering the Devil to inspire them with evil. All the
subtilties of theology have really only a tendency to destroy the very
notions itself inculcates concerning the Divinity. This theology is
evidently the tub of the Danaides.

It is a fact, however,