390.  I find in the arguments that have just been quoted nothing which these reflexions fail to satisfy.  When God produces the thing he produces it as an individual and not as a universal of logic (I admit); but he produces its essence before its accidents, its nature before its operations, following the priority of their nature, and in signo anteriore rationis.  Thus one sees how the creature can be the true cause of the sin, while conservation by God does not prevent the sin; God disposes in accordance with the preceding state of the same creature, in order to follow the laws of his wisdom notwithstanding the sin, which in the first place will be produced by the creature.  But it is true that God would not in the beginning have created the soul in a state wherein it would have sinned from the first moment, as the Schoolmen have justly observed:  for there is nothing in the laws of his wisdom that could have induced him so to do.

391.  This law of wisdom brings it about also that God reproduces the same substance, the same soul.  Such was the answer that could have been given by the Abbe whom M. Bayle introduces in his Dictionary (art.  ‘Pyrrhon.’ lit.  B, p. 2432).  This wisdom effects the connexion of things.  I concede therefore that the creature does not co-operate with God to conserve [359] himself (in the sense in which I have just explained conservation).  But I see nothing to prevent the creature’s co-operation with God for the production of any other thing:  and especially might this concern its inward operation, as in the case of a thought or a volition, things really distinct from the substance.

392.  But there I am once more at grips with M. Bayle.  He maintains that there are no such accidents distinct from the substance.  ‘The reasons’, he says, ’which our modern philosophers have employed to demonstrate that the accidents are not beings in reality distinct from the substance are not mere difficulties; they are arguments which overwhelm one, and which cannot be refuted.  Take the trouble’, he adds, ’to look for them in the writings of Father Maignan, or Father Malebranche or M. Calli’ (Professor of Philosophy at Caen) ’or in the Accidentia profligata of Father Saguens, disciple of Father Maignan, the extract from which is to be found in the Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres, June 1702.  Or if you wish one author only to suffice you, choose Dom Francois Lami, a Benedictine monk, and one of the strongest Cartesians to be found in France.  You will find among his Philosophical Letters, printed at Trevoux in 1703, that one wherein by the geometricians’ method he demonstrates “that God is the sole true cause of all that which is real.”  I would wish to see all these books; and as for this last proposition, it may be true in a very good sense:  God is the one principal cause of pure and absolute realities, or of perfections. Causae secundae agunt in virtute primae. But when one comprises limitations and privations under the term realities one may say that the second causes co-operate in the production of that which is limited; otherwise God would be the cause of sin, and even the sole cause.