39.  For now, it will be well to continue our examination of the important question of the use of reason in theology, and to make reflexions upon what M. Bayle has said thereon in divers passages of his works.  As he paid particular attention in his Historical and Critical Dictionary to expounding the objections of the Manichaeans and those of the Pyrrhonians, and as this procedure had been criticized by some persons zealous for religion, he placed a dissertation at the end of the second edition of this Dictionary, which aimed at showing, by examples, by authorities and by reasons, the innocence and usefulness of his course of action.  I am persuaded (as I have said above) that the specious objections one can urge against truth are very useful, and that they serve to confirm and to illumine it, giving opportunity to intelligent persons to find new openings or to turn the old to better account.  But M. Bayle seeks therein a usefulness quite the reverse of this:  it would be that of displaying the power of faith by showing that the truths it teaches cannot sustain the attacks of reason and that it nevertheless holds its own in the heart of the faithful.  M. Nicole seems to call that ’the triumph of God’s authority over human reason’, in the words of his quoted by M. Bayle in the third volume of his Reply to the Questions of a Provincial (ch. 177, p. 120).  But since reason is a gift of God, even as faith is, contention between them would cause God to contend against God; and if the objections of reason against any article of faith are insoluble, then it must be said that this alleged article will be false and not revealed:  this will be [97] a chimera of the human mind, and the triumph of this faith will be capable of comparison with bonfires lighted after a defeat.  Such is the doctrine of the damnation of unbaptized children, which M. Nicole would have us assume to be a consequence of original sin; such would be the eternal damnation of adults lacking the light that is necessary for the attainment of salvation.

40.  Yet everyone need not enter into theological discussions; and persons whose condition allows not of exact researches should be content with instruction on faith, without being disturbed by the objections; and if some exceeding great difficulty should happen to strike them, it is permitted to them to avert the mind from it, offering to God a sacrifice of their curiosity:  for when one is assured of a truth one has no need to listen to the objections.  As there are many people whose faith is rather small and shallow to withstand such dangerous tests, I think one must not present them with that which might be poisonous for them; or, if one cannot hide from them what is only too public, the antidote must be added to it; that is to say, one must try to add the answer to the objection, certainly not withhold it as unobtainable.