wicked, and has deserved that God the supremely good should make him feel the effects of his anger.  It is therefore not God who is the cause of moral evil:  but he is the cause of physical evil, that is, of the punishment of moral evil.  And this punishment, far from being incompatible with the supremely good principle, of necessity emanates from that one of its attributes, I mean its justice, which is not less essential to it than its goodness.  This answer, the most reasonable that Melissus can give, is fundamentally good and sound, but it may be disputed by something more specious and more dazzling.  For indeed Zoroaster objects that the infinitely good principle ought to have created man not only without actual evil, but also without the inclination towards evil; that God, having foreseen sin with all its consequences, ought to have prevented it; that he ought to have impelled man to moral good, and not to have allowed him any force for tending towards crime.’  That is quite easy to say, but it is not practicable if one follows the principles [221] of order:  it could not have been accomplished without perpetual miracles.  Ignorance, error and malice follow one another naturally in animals made as we are:  should this species, then, have been missing in the universe?  I have no doubt but that it is too important there, despite all its weaknesses, for God to have consented to its abolition.

156.  M. Bayle, in the article entitled ‘Paulicians’ inserted by him in his Dictionary, follows up the pronouncements he made in the article on the Manichaeans.  According to him (p. 2330, lit.  H) the orthodox seem to admit two first principles, in making the devil the originator of sin.  M. Becker, a former minister of Amsterdam, author of the book entitled The World Bewitched, has made use of this idea in order to demonstrate that one should not assign such power and authority to the Devil as would allow of his comparison with God.  Therein he is right:  but he pushes the conclusions too far.  And the author of the book entitled [Greek:  Apokatastasis Panton] believes that if the Devil had never been vanquished and despoiled, if he had always kept his prey, if the title of invincible had belonged to him, that would have done injury to the glory of God.  But it is a poor advantage to keep those whom one has led astray in order to share their punishment for ever.  And as for the cause of evil, it is true that the Devil is the author of sin.  But the origin of sin comes from farther away, its source is in the original imperfection of creatures:  that renders them capable of sinning, and there are circumstances in the sequence of things which cause this power to evince itself in action.