constant, choleric, vindictive Plutarch'";[2] opinion
strengthened finally by all the effort of Bayle's dialectic.

Here is the ground of dispute, brought to fairly dazzling light by the
Jesuit Richeome, and rendered still more plausible by the way Bayle has
turned it to account.[3]

"There are two porters at the door of a house; they are asked: 'Can one
speak to your master?' 'He is not there,' answers one. 'He is there,'
answers the other, 'but he is busy making counterfeit money, forged
contracts, daggers and poisons, to undo those who have but accomplished
his purposes.' The atheist resembles the first of these porters, the
pagan the other. It is clear, therefore, that the pagan offends the
Deity more gravely than does the atheist."

With Father Richeome's and even Bayle's permission, that is not at all
the position of the matter. For the first porter to resemble the
atheists, he must not say--"My master is not here": he should say--"I
have no master; him whom you claim to be my master does not exist; my
comrade is a fool to tell you that he is busy compounding poisons and
sharpening daggers to assassinate those who have executed his caprices.
No such being exists in the world."

Richeome has reasoned, therefore, very badly. And Bayle, in his somewhat
diffuse discourses, has forgotten himself so far as to do Richeome the
honour of annotating him very malapropos.

Plutarch seems to express himself much better in preferring people who
affirm there is no Plutarch, to those who claim Plutarch to be an
unsociable man. In truth, what does it matter to him that people say he
is not in the world? But it matters much to him that his reputation be
not tarnished. It is not thus with the Supreme Being.

Plutarch even does not broach the real object under discussion. It is
not a question of knowing who offends more the Supreme Being, whether it
be he who denies Him, or he who distorts Him. It is impossible to know
otherwise than by revelation, if God is offended by the empty things men
say of Him.

Without a thought, philosophers fall almost always into the ideas of the
common herd, in supposing God to be jealous of His glory, to be
choleric, to love vengeance, and in taking rhetorical figures for real
ideas. The interesting subject for the whole universe, is to know if it
be not better, for the good of all mankind, to admit a rewarding and
revengeful God, who recompenses good actions hidden, and who punishes
secret crim