386.  Let us then admit in such a sense that conservation is a continued creation, and let us see what M. Bayle seems to infer thence (p. 771) after the author of the Reflexion on the Picture of Socinianism, in opposition to M. Jurieu.  ‘It seems to me’, this writer says, ’that one must conclude that God does all, and that in all creation there are no first or second or even occasional causes, as can be easily proved.  At this moment when I speak, I am such as I am, with all my circumstances, with such thought, such action, whether I sit or stand, that if God creates me in this moment such as I am, as one must of necessity say in this system, he creates me with such thought, such action, such movement and such determination.  One cannot say that God creates me in the first place, and that once I am created he produces with me my movements and my determinations.  That is indefensible for two reasons.  The first is, that when God creates me or conserves me at this instant, he does not conserve me as a being without form, like a species, or another of the Universals of Logic.  I am an individual; he creates me and conserves me as such, and as being all that I am in this instant, with all my attendant circumstances.  The second reason is that if God creates me in this instant, and one says that afterwards he produces with me my actions, it will be necessary to imagine another instant for action:  for before acting one must exist.  Now that would be two instants where we only assume one.  It is therefore certain in this hypothesis that creatures have neither more connexion nor more relation with their actions than they had with their production at the first moment of the first creation.’  The author of this Reflexion draws thence very harsh conclusions which one can picture to oneself; and he testifies at the end that one would be deeply indebted to any man that should teach those who approve this system how to extricate themselves from these frightful absurdities.

387.  M. Bayle carries this still further.  ‘You know’, he says (p. 775), ‘that it is demonstrated in the Scholastic writings’ (he cites Arriaga, Disp. 9, Phys., sect. 6 et praesertim, sub-sect. 3) ’that the creature cannot be either the total cause or the partial cause of its conservation:  for if it were, it would exist before existing, which is [357] contradictory.  You know that the argument proceeds like this:  that which conserves itself acts; now that which acts exists, and nothing can act before it has attained complete existence; therefore, if a creature conserved itself, it would act before being.  This argument is not founded upon probabilities, but upon the first principles of Metaphysics, non entis nulla sunt accidentia, operari sequitur esse, axioms as clear as daylight.  Let us go further.  If creatures co-operated with God (here is meant an active cooperation, and not co-operation by a passive instrument) to conserve themselves they would act