32.  One thing which might have contributed most towards M. Bayle’s belief that the difficulties of reason in opposition to faith cannot be obviated is that he seems to demand that God be justified in some such manner as that commonly used for pleading the cause of a man accused before his judge.  But he has not remembered that in the tribunals of men, which cannot always penetrate to the truth, one is often compelled to be guided by signs and probabilities, and above all by presumptions or prejudices; whereas it is agreed, as we have already observed, that Mysteries are not probable.  For instance, M. Bayle will not have it that one can justify the goodness of God in the permission of sin, because probability would be against a man that should happen to be in circumstances comparable in our eyes to [93] this permission.  God foresees that Eve will be deceived by the serpent if he places her in the circumstances wherein she later found herself; and nevertheless he placed her there.  Now if a father or a guardian did the same in regard to his child or his ward, if a friend did so in regard to a young person whose behaviour was his concern, the judge would not be satisfied by the excuses of an advocate who said that the man only permitted the evil, without doing it or willing it:  he would rather take this permission as a sign of ill intention, and would regard it as a sin of omission, which would render the one convicted thereof accessary in another’s sin of commission.

33.  But it must be borne in mind that when one has foreseen the evil and has not prevented it although it seems as if one could have done so with ease, and one has even done things that have facilitated it, it does not follow on that account necessarily that one is accessary thereto.  It is only a very strong presumption, such as commonly replaces truth in human affairs, but which would be destroyed by an exact consideration of the facts, supposing we were capable of that in relation to God.  For amongst lawyers that is called ‘presumption’ which must provisionally pass for truth in case the contrary is not proved; and it says more than ‘conjecture’, although the Dictionary of the Academy has not sifted the difference.  Now there is every reason to conclude unquestionably that one would find through this consideration, if only it were attainable, that reasons most just, and stronger than those which appear contrary to them, have compelled the All-Wise to permit the evil, and even to do things which have facilitated it.  Of this some instances will be given later.

34.  It is none too easy, I confess, for a father, a guardian, a friend to have such reasons in the case under consideration.  Yet the thing is not absolutely impossible, and a skilled writer of fiction might perchance find an extraordinary case that would even justify a man in the circumstances I have just indicated.  But in reference to God there is no need to suppose or to establish particular reasons such as may have induced him to permit the evil; general reasons suffice.  One knows that he takes care of the whole universe, whereof all the parts are connected; and one must thence infer that he has had innumerable considerations whose result made him deem it inadvisable to prevent certain evils.