l," said he, "tempts men but
to have them as comrades of his misery in hell. Let us address
ourselves, then, to the Pope, who possesses the keys of paradise and of
hell; let us ask him to beseech God, at the head of the whole Church, to
reconcile Himself with the devil; to take him back into His favor; to
re-establish him in His first rank. This can not fail to put an end to
his sinister projects against mankind." The good monk did not see,
perhaps, that the devil is at least fully as useful as God to the
ministers of religion. These reap too many benefits from their
differences to lend themselves willingly to a reconciliation between the
two enemies ties, upon whose contests their existence and their revenues
depend. If men would cease to be tempted and to sin, the ministry of
priests would become useless to them. Manicheism is evidently the
support of all religions; but unfortunately the devil, being invented to
remove all suspicion of malice from Divinity, proves to us at every
moment the powerlessness or the awkwardness of his celestial Adversary.

LXXVI.--IF GOD COULD NOT RENDER HUMAN NATURE SINLESS, HE HAS NO RIGHT TO
PUNISH MAN.

Man's nature, it is said, must necessarily become corrupt. God could not
endow him with sinlessness, which is an inalienable portion of Divine
perfection. But if God could not render him sinless, why did He take the
trouble of creating man, whose nature was to become corrupt, and which,
consequently, had to offend God? On the other side, if God Himself was
not able to render human nature sinless, what right had He to punish men
for not being sinless? It is but by the right of might. But the right of
the strongest is violence; and violence is not suited to the most Just
of Beings. God would be supremely unjust if He punished men for not
having a portion of the Divine perfections, or for not being able to be
Gods like Himself.

Could not God have at least endowed men with that sort of perfection of
which their nature is susceptible? If some men are good or render
themselves agreeable to their God, why did not this God bestow the same
favor or give the same dispositions to all beings of our kind? Why does
the number of wicked exceed so greatly the number of good people? Why,
for every friend, does God find ten thousand enemies in a world which
depended upon Him alone to people with honest men? If it is true that
God intends to form in heaven a court of saints, of chosen ones, or of