3.  Thus it is made clear that God can exempt creatures from the laws he has prescribed for them, and produce in them that which their nature does not bear by performing a miracle.  When they have risen to perfections and faculties nobler than those whereto they can by their nature attain, the Schoolmen call this faculty an ‘Obediential Power’, that is to say, a [75] power which the thing acquires by obeying the command of him who can give that which the thing has not.  The Schoolmen, however, usually give instances of this power which to me appear impossible:  they maintain, for example, that God can give the creature the faculty to create.  It may be that there are miracles which God performs through the ministry of angels, where the laws of Nature are not violated, any more than when men assist Nature by art, the skill of angels differing from ours only by degree of perfection.  Nevertheless it still remains true that the laws of Nature are subject to be dispensed from by the Law-giver; whereas the eternal verities, as for instance those of geometry, admit no dispensation, and faith cannot contradict them.  Thus it is that there cannot be any invincible objection to truth.  For if it is a question of proof which is founded upon principles or incontestable facts and formed by a linking together of eternal verities, the conclusion is certain and essential, and that which is contrary to it must be false; otherwise two contradictories might be true at the same time.  If the objection is not conclusive, it can only form a probable argument, which has no force against faith, since it is agreed that the Mysteries of religion are contrary to appearances.  Now M. Bayle declares, in his posthumous Reply to M. le Clerc, that he does not claim that there are demonstrations contrary to the truths of faith:  and as a result all these insuperable difficulties, these so-called wars between reason and faith, vanish away.

  Hi motus animorum atque haec discrimina tanta,
  Pulveris exigui jactu compressa quiescunt.

4.  Protestant theologians as well as those of the Roman confession admit the maxims which I have just laid down, when they handle the matter with attention; and all that is said against reason has no force save against a kind of counterfeit reason, corrupted and deluded by false appearances.  It is the same with our notions of the justice and the goodness of God, which are spoken of sometimes as if we had neither any idea nor any definition of their nature.  But in that case we should have no ground for ascribing these attributes to him, or lauding him for them.  His goodness and his justice as well as his wisdom differ from ours only because they are infinitely more perfect.  Thus the simple notions, the necessary truths and the conclusive results of philosophy cannot be contrary to revelation.  And when some [76] philosophical maxims are rejected in theology, the reason is that they are considered to have only a physical or moral necessity, which speaks only of that which takes place usually, and is consequently founded on appearances, but which may be withheld if God so pleases.