159.  ‘But among all these infinite combinations’, says M. Bayle (p. 853), ’it pleased God to choose one wherein Adam was to sin, and by his decree he made it, in preference to all the others, the plan that should come to pass.’  Very good; that is speaking my language; so long as one applies it to the combinations which compose the whole universe.  ’You will therefore never make us understand’, he adds, ’how God did not will that Eve and Adam should sin, since he rejected all the combinations wherein they would not have sinned.’  But the thing is in general very easy to understand, from all that I have just said.  This combination that makes the whole universe is the best; God therefore could not refrain from choosing it without [223] incurring a lapse, and rather than incur such, a thing altogether inappropriate to him, he permits the lapse or the sin of man which is involved in this combination.

160.  M. Jacquelot, with other able men, does not differ in opinion from me, when for example he says, p. 186 of his treatise on the Conformity of Faith with Reason:  ’Those who are puzzled by these difficulties seem to be too limited in their outlook, and to wish to reduce all God’s designs to their own interests.  When God formed the universe, his whole prospect was himself and his own glory, so that if we had knowledge of all creatures, of their diverse combinations and of their different relations, we should understand without difficulty that the universe corresponds perfectly to the infinite wisdom of the Almighty.’  He says elsewhere (p. 232):  ’Supposing the impossible, that God could not prevent the wrong use of free will without destroying it, it will be agreed that since his wisdom and his glory determined him to form free creatures this powerful reason must have prevailed over the grievous consequences which their freedom might have.’  I have endeavoured to develop this still further through the reason of the best and the moral necessity which led God to make this choice, despite the sin of some creatures which is involved therein.  I think that I have cut down to the root of the difficulty; nevertheless I am well pleased, for the sake of throwing more light on the matter, to apply my principle of solution to the peculiar difficulties of M. Bayle.

161.  Here is one, set forth in these terms (ch. 148, p. 856):  ’Would it in a prince be a mark of his kindness:  1.  To give to a hundred messengers as much money as is needed for a journey of two hundred leagues? 2.  To promise a recompense to all those who should finish the journey without having borrowed anything, and to threaten with imprisonment all those whom their money should not have sufficed? 3.  To make choice of a hundred persons, of whom he would know for certain that there were but two who should earn the recompense, the ninety-eight others being destined to find on the way either a mistress or a gamester or some other thing which would make