381.  Yet even though the source of evil lies in the possible forms, anterior to the acts of God’s will, it is nevertheless true that God co-operates in evil in the actual performance of introducing these forms into matter:  and this is what causes the difficulty in question here.  Durand de Saint-Pourcain, Cardinal Aureolus, Nicolas Taurel, Father Louis de Dole, M. Bernier and some others, speaking of this co-operation, would have it only general, for fear of impairing the freedom of man and the holiness of God.  They seem to maintain that God, having given to creatures the power to act, contents himself with conserving this power.  On the [354] other hand, M. Bayle, according to some modern writers, carries the cooperation of God too far:  he seems to fear lest the creature be not sufficiently dependent upon God.  He goes so far as to deny action to creatures; he does not even acknowledge any real distinction between accident and substance.

382.  He places great reliance especially on that doctrine accepted of the Schoolmen, that conservation is a continued creation.  The conclusion to be drawn from this doctrine would seem to be that the creature never exists, that it is ever newborn and ever dying, like time, movement and other transient beings.  Plato believed this of material and tangible things, saying that they are in a perpetual flux, semper fluunt, nunquam sunt.  But of immaterial substances he judged quite differently, regarding them alone as real:  nor was he in that altogether mistaken.  Yet continued creation applies to all creatures without distinction.  Sundry good philosophers have been opposed to this dogma, and M. Bayle tells that David de Rodon, a philosopher renowned among those of the French who have adhered to Geneva, deliberately refuted it.  The Arminians also do not approve of it; they are not much in favour of these metaphysical subtleties.  I will say nothing of the Socinians, who relish them even less.

383.  For a proper enquiry as to whether conservation is a continued creation, it would be necessary to consider the reasons whereon this dogma is founded.  The Cartesians, after the example of their master, employ in order to prove it a principle which is not conclusive enough.  They say that ’the moments of time having no necessary connexion with one another, it does not follow that because I am at this moment I shall exist at the moment which shall follow, if the same cause which gives me being for this moment does not also give it to me for the instant following.’  The author of the Reflexion on the Picture of Socinianism has made use of this argument, and M. Bayle (perhaps the author of this same Reflexion) quotes it (Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, vol.  III, ch. 141, p. 771).  One may answer that in fact it does not follow of necessity that, because I am, I shall be; but this follows naturally, nevertheless, that is, of itself, per se, if nothing prevents it.  It is the distinction that can be drawn between the essential and the natural.  For the same movement endures naturally unless some new cause prevents it or changes it, because the reason which makes it cease at this instant, if it is no new reason, [355] would have already made it cease sooner.