ne may
envisage differently the strange consequences of an inevitable necessity,
considering that it would destroy the freedom of the will, so essential to
the morality of action: for justice and injustice, praise and blame,
punishment and reward cannot attach to necessary actions, and nobody will
be under obligation to do the impossible or to abstain from doing what is
absolutely necessary. Without any intention of abusing this consideration
in order to favour irregularity, one will nevertheless not escape
embarrassment sometimes, when it comes to a question of judging the actions
of others, or rather of answering objections, amongst which there are some
even concerned with the actions of God, whereof I will speak presently. And
as an insuperable necessity would open the door to impiety, whether through
the impunity one could thence infer or the hopelessness of any attempt to
resist a torrent that sweeps everything along with it, it is important to
note the different degrees of necessity, and to show that there are some
which cannot do harm, as there are others which cannot be admitted without
giving rise to evil consequences.

Some go even further: not content with using the pretext of necessity to
prove that virtue and vice do neither good nor ill, they have the hardihood
to make the Divinity accessary to their licentious way of life, and they
imitate the pagans of old, who ascribed to the gods the cause of their
crimes, as if a divinity drove them to do evil. The philosophy of
Christians, which recognizes better than that of the ancients the
dependence of things upon the first Author and his co-operation with all
the actions of creatures, appears to have increased this difficulty. Some
able men in our own time have gone so far as to deny all action to [58]
creatures, and M. Bayle, who tended a little towards this extraordinary
opinion, made use of it to restore the lapsed dogma of the two principles,
or two gods, the one good, the other evil, as if this dogma were a better
solution to the difficulties over the origin of evil. Yet again he
acknowledges that it is an indefensible opinion and that the oneness of the
Principle is incontestably founded on _a priori_ reasons; but he wishes to
infer that our Reason is confounded and cannot meet her own objections, and
that one should disregard them and hold fast the revealed dogmas, which
teach us the existence of one God altogether good, altogether powerful and
altoget