as are sinless and holy by their nature.  There are perhaps people who give this privilege to the Blessed Virgin, since, moreover, the Roman Church to-day places her above the angels.  But it suffices us that the universe is very great and very varied:  to wish to limit it is to have little knowledge thereof.  ‘But’, M. Bayle goes on, ’God has given free will to creatures capable of sinning, without their having asked him for this grace.  And he who gave such a gift would be more answerable for the unhappiness that it brought upon those who made use of it, than if he had granted it only in response to their importunate prayers.’  But importunity in prayers makes no difference to God; he knows better than we what we need, and he only grants what serves the interest of the whole.  It seems that M. Bayle here makes free will consist in the faculty for sinning; yet he acknowledges elsewhere that God and the Saints are free, without having this faculty.  However that may be, I have already shown fully that God, doing what his wisdom and his goodness combined ordain, is not answerable for the evil that he permits.  Even men, when they do their duty, are not answerable for consequences, whether they foresee them or not.

121.  VI.  ’It is as sure a means of taking a man’s life to give him a silk cord that one knows certainly he will make use of freely to strangle himself, as to plant a few dagger thrusts in his body.  One desires his death not less when one makes use of the first way, than when one employs the second:  it even seems as though one desires it with a more malicious intention, since one tends to leave to him the whole trouble and the whole blame of his destruction.’

[194] Those who write treatises on Duties (De Officiis) as, for instance, Cicero, St. Ambrose, Grotius, Opalenius, Sharrok, Rachelius, Pufendorf, as well as the Casuists, teach that there are cases where one is not obliged to return to its owner a thing deposited:  for example, one will not give back a dagger when one knows that he who has deposited it is about to stab someone.  Let us pretend that I have in my hands the fatal draught that Meleager’s mother will make use of to kill him; the magic javelin that Cephalus will unwittingly employ to kill his Procris; the horses of Theseus that will tear to pieces Hippolytus, his son:  these things are demanded back from me, and I am right in refusing them, knowing the use that will be made of them.  But how will it be if a competent judge orders me to restore them, when I cannot prove to him what I know of the evil consequences that restitution will have, Apollo perchance having given to me, as to Cassandra, the gift of prophecy under the condition that I shall not be believed?  I should then be compelled to make restitution, having no alternative other than my own destruction:  thus I cannot escape from contributing towards the evil.  Another comparison:  Jupiter promises Semele, the Sun Phaeton, Cupid Psyche to grant whatever favour the other shall ask.  They swear by the Styx,