certainty.  Thus when one says that the Father is God, that the Son is God and that the Holy Spirit is God, and that nevertheless there is only [88] one God, although these three Persons differ from one another, one must consider that this word God has not the same sense at the beginning as at the end of this statement.  Indeed it signifies now the Divine Substance and now a Person of the Godhead.  In general, one must take care never to abandon the necessary and eternal truths for the sake of upholding Mysteries, lest the enemies of religion seize upon such an occasion for decrying both religion and Mysteries.

23.  The distinction which is generally drawn between that which is above reason and that which is against reason is tolerably in accord with the distinction which has just been made between the two kinds of necessity.  For what is contrary to reason is contrary to the absolutely certain and inevitable truths; and what is above reason is in opposition only to what one is wont to experience or to understand.  That is why I am surprised that there are people of intelligence who dispute this distinction, and that M. Bayle should be of this number.  The distinction is assuredly very well founded.  A truth is above reason when our mind (or even every created mind) cannot comprehend it.  Such is, as it seems to me, the Holy Trinity; such are the miracles reserved for God alone, as for instance Creation; such is the choice of the order of the universe, which depends upon universal harmony, and upon the clear knowledge of an infinity of things at once.  But a truth can never be contrary to reason, and once a dogma has been disputed and refuted by reason, instead of its being incomprehensible, one may say that nothing is easier to understand, nor more obvious, than its absurdity.  For I observed at the beginning that by REASON here I do not mean the opinions and discourses of men, nor even the habit they have formed of judging things according to the usual course of Nature, but rather the inviolable linking together of truths.

24.  I must come now to the great question which M. Bayle brought up recently, to wit, whether a truth, and especially a truth of faith, can prove to be subject to irrefutable objections.  This excellent author appears to answer with a bold affirmative:  he quotes theologians of repute in his party, and even in the Church of Rome, who appear to say the same as he affirms; and he cites philosophers who have believed that there are even philosophical truths whose champions cannot answer the objections that are brought up against them.  He believes that the theological doctrine of [89] predestination is of this nature, and in philosophy that of the composition of the Continuum.  These are, indeed, the two labyrinths which have ever exercised theologians and philosophers.  Libertus Fromondus, a theologian of Louvain (a great friend of Jansenius, whose posthumous book entitled Augustinus he in fact published), who also wrote a book entitled explicitly Labyrinthus de Compositione Continui, experienced in full measure the difficulties inherent in both doctrines; and the renowned Ochino admirably presented what he calls ’the labyrinths of predestination’.