35.  It should even be concluded that there must have been great or [94] rather invincible reasons which prompted the divine Wisdom to the permission of the evil that surprises us, from the mere fact that this permission has occurred:  for nothing can come from God that is not altogether consistent with goodness, justice and holiness.  Thus we can judge by the event (or a posteriori) that the permission was indispensable, although it be not possible for us to show this (a priori) by the detailed reasons that God can have had therefor; as it is not necessary either that we show this to justify him.  M. Bayle himself aptly says concerning that (Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, vol.  III, ch. 165, p. 1067):  Sin made its way into the world; God therefore was able to permit it without detriment to his perfections; ab actu ad potentiam valet consequentia. In God this conclusion holds good:  he did this, therefore he did it well.  It is not, then, that we have no notion of justice in general fit to be applied also to God’s justice; nor is it that God’s justice has other rules than the justice known of men, but that the case in question is quite different from those which are common among men.  Universal right is the same for God and for men; but the question of fact is quite different in their case and his.

36.  We may even assume or pretend (as I have already observed) that there is something similar among men to this circumstance in God’s actions.  A man might give such great and strong proofs of his virtue and his holiness that all the most apparent reasons one could put forward against him to charge him with an alleged crime, for instance a larceny or murder, would deserve to be rejected as the calumnies of false witnesses or as an extraordinary play of chance which sometimes throws suspicion on the most innocent.  Thus in a case where every other would run the risk of being condemned or put to the torture (according to the laws of the country), this man would be absolved by his judges unanimously.  Now in this case, which indeed is rare, but which is not impossible, one might say in a sense (sano sensu) that there is a conflict between reason and faith, and that the rules of law are other in respect of this person than they are in respect of the remainder of mankind.  But that, when explained, will signify only that appearances of reason here give way before the faith that is due to the word and the integrity of this great and holy man, and that he is privileged above other men; not indeed as if there were one law for others and another for him, nor as if one had no understanding of what justice is in relation to him.  It is rather because the rules of universal justice do not find here [95] the application that they receive elsewhere, or because they favour him instead of accusing him, since there are in this personage qualities so admirable, that by virtue of a good logic of probabilities one should place more faith in his word than in that of many others.