this great work.  This God would pride himself only on skill; he would prefer to let the whole human kind perish rather than suffer some atoms to go faster or more slowly than general laws require.’  M. Bayle would not have made this antithesis if he had been informed on the system of general harmony which I assume, which states that the realm of efficient causes and that of final causes are parallel to each other; that God has no less the quality of the best monarch than that of the greatest architect; that matter is so disposed that the laws of motion serve as the best guidance for spirits; and that consequently it will prove that he has attained the utmost good possible, provided one reckon the metaphysical, physical and moral goods together.

248.  But (M.  Bayle will say) God having power to avert innumerable evils by one small miracle, why did he not employ it?  He gives so much extraordinary help to fallen men; but slight help of such a kind given to Eve would have prevented her fall and rendered the temptation of the serpent ineffective.  I have sufficiently met objections of this sort with this general answer, that God ought not to make choice of another universe since he has chosen the best, and has only made use of the miracles necessary thereto.  I had answered M. Bayle that miracles change the natural order of the universe.  He replies, that that is an illusion, and that the miracle of the wedding at Cana (for instance) made no change in the air of the room, except that instead of receiving into its pores some corpuscles of water, it [280] received corpuscles of wine.  But one must bear in mind that once the best plan of things has been chosen nothing can be changed therein.

249.  As for miracles (concerning which I have already said something in this work), they are perhaps not all of one and the same kind:  there are many, to all appearances, which God brings about through the ministry of invisible substances, such as the angels, as Father Malebranche also believes.  These angels or these substances act according to the ordinary laws of their nature, being combined with bodies more rarefied and more vigorous than those we have at our command.  And such miracles are only so by comparison, and in relation to us; just as our works would be considered miraculous amongst animals if they were capable of remarking upon them.  The changing of water into wine might be a miracle of this kind.  But the Creation, the Incarnation and some other actions of God exceed all the power of creatures and are truly miracles, or indeed Mysteries.  If, nevertheless, the changing of water into wine at Cana was a miracle of the highest kind, God would have thereby changed the whole course of the universe, because of the connexion of bodies; or else he would have been bound to prevent this connexion miraculously also, and cause the bodies not concerned in the miracle to act as if no miracle had happened.  After the miracle was over, it would have been necessary to restore all things in those very bodies concerned to the state they would have reached without the miracle:  whereafter all would have returned to its original course.  Thus this miracle demanded more than at first appears.