37.  Since it is permitted here to imagine possible cases, may one not suppose this incomparable man to be the Adept or the Possessor of

                  ’that blessed Stone
  Able to enrich all earthly Kings alone’

and that he spends every day prodigious sums in order to feed and to rescue from distress countless numbers of poor men?  Be there never so many witnesses or appearances of every kind tending to prove that this great benefactor of the human race has just committed some larceny, is it not true that the whole earth would make mock of the accusation, however specious it might be?  Now God is infinitely above the goodness and the power of this man, and consequently there are no reasons at all, however apparent they be, that can hold good against faith, that is, against the assurance or the confidence in God wherewith we can and ought to say that God has done all things well.  The objections are therefore not insoluble.  They only involve prejudices and probabilities, which are, however, overthrown by reasons incomparably stronger.  One must not say either that what we call justice is nothing in relation to God, that he is the absolute Master of all things even to the point of being able to condemn the innocent without violating his justice, or finally that justice is something arbitrary where he is concerned.  Those are rash and dangerous expressions, whereunto some have been led astray to the discredit of the attributes of God.  For if such were the case there would be no reason for praising his goodness and his justice:  rather would it be as if the most wicked spirit, the Prince of evil genii, the evil principle of the Manichaeans, were the sole master of the universe, just as I observed before.  What means would there be of distinguishing the true God from the false God of Zoroaster if all things depended upon the caprice of an arbitrary power and there were neither rule nor consideration for anything whatever?

38.  It is therefore more than evident that nothing compels us to commit ourselves to a doctrine so strange, since it suffices to say that we [96] have not enough knowledge of the facts when there is a question of answering probabilities which appear to throw doubt upon the justice and the goodness of God, and which would vanish away if the facts were well known to us.  We need neither renounce reason in order to listen to faith nor blind ourselves in order to see clearly, as Queen Christine used to say:  it is enough to reject ordinary appearances when they are contrary to Mysteries; and this is not contrary to reason, since even in natural things we are very often undeceived about appearances either by experience or by superior reasons.  All that has been set down here in advance, only with the object of showing more plainly wherein the fault of the objections and the abuse of reason consists in the present case, where the claim is made that reason has greatest force against faith:  we shall come afterwards to a more exact discussion of that which concerns the origin of evil and the permission of sin with its consequences.