of answering them. But as I have taken upon myself the task of
meeting them in detail, not only because there will perhaps still be
passages calling for elucidation, but also because his arguments are
usually full of wit and erudition, and serve to throw greater light on this
controversy, it will be well to give an account of the chief objections
that are dispersed through his works, and to add my answers. At the
beginning I observed 'that God co-operates in moral evil, and in physical
evil, and in each of them both morally and physically; and that man
co-operates therein also morally and physically in a free and active way,
becoming in consequence subject to blame and punishment'. I have shown also
that each point has its own difficulty; but the greatest of these lies in
maintaining that God co-operates morally in moral evil, that is, in sin,
without being the originator of the sin, and even without being accessary
thereto.

108. He does this by _permitting_ it justly, and by _directing_ it wisely
towards the good, as I have shown in a manner that appears tolerably
intelligible. But as it is here principally that M. Bayle undertakes [183]
to discomfit those who maintain that there is nothing in faith which cannot
be harmonized with reason, it is also here especially I must show that my
dogmas are fortified (to make use of his own allegory) with a rampart, even
of reasons, which is able to resist the fire of his strongest batteries. He
has ranged them against me in chapter 144 of his _Reply to the Questions of
a Provincial_ (vol. III, p. 812), where he includes the theological
doctrine in seven propositions and opposes thereto nineteen philosophic
maxims, like so many large cannon capable of breaching my rampart. Let us
begin with the theological propositions.

109. I. 'God,' he says, 'the Being eternal and necessary, infinitely good,
holy, wise and powerful, possesses from all eternity a glory and a bliss
that can never either increase or diminish.' This proposition of M. Bayle's
is no less philosophical than theological. To say that God possesses a
'glory' when he is alone, that depends upon the meaning of the term. One
may say, with some, that glory is the satisfaction one finds in being aware
of one's own perfections; and in this sense God possesses it always. But
when glory signifies that others become aware of these perfections, one may
say that God acquires it only when he reveals himself to intelligent
creature