223.  M. Arnauld and M. Bayle appear to maintain that this method of explaining things and of establishing a best among all the plans for the universe, one such as may not be surpassed by any other, sets a limit to God’s power.  ‘Have you considered’, says M. Arnauld to Father Malebranche (in his Reflexions on the New System of Nature and Grace, vol.  II, p. 385), ’that in making such assumptions you take it upon yourself to subvert the first article of the creed, whereby we make profession of believing in God the Father Almighty?’ He had said already (p. 362):  ’Can one maintain, without trying to blind oneself, that a course of action which could not fail to have this grievous result, namely, that the majority of men perish, bears the stamp of God’s goodness more than a different course of action, which would have caused, if God had followed it, the salvation of all men?’ And, as M. Jacquelot does not differ from the principles I have just laid down, M. Bayle raises like objections in his case (Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, vol.  III, ch. 151, p. 900):  ’If one adopts such explanations’, he says, ’one sees oneself constrained to renounce the most obvious notions on the nature of the supremely perfect Being.  These teach us that all things not implying contradiction are possible for him, [267] that consequently it is possible for him to save people whom he does not save:  for what contradiction would result supposing the number of the elect were greater than it is?  They teach us besides that, since he is supremely happy, he has no will which he cannot carry out.  How, then, shall we understand that he wills to save all men and that he cannot do so?  We sought some light to help us out of the perplexities we feel in comparing the idea of God with the state of the human kind, and lo! we are given elucidations that cast us into darkness more dense.’

224.  All these obstacles vanish before the exposition I have just given.  I agree with M. Bayle’s principle, and it is also mine, that everything implying no contradiction is possible.  But as for me, holding as I do that God did the best that was possible, or that he could not have done better than he has done, deeming also that to pass any other judgement upon his work in its entirety would be to wrong his goodness or his wisdom, I must say that to make something which surpasses in goodness the best itself, that indeed would imply contradiction.  That would be as if someone maintained that God could draw from one point to another a line shorter than the straight line, and accused those who deny this of subverting the article of faith whereby we believe in God the Father Almighty.