41.  The passages from the excellent theologians who speak of this triumph of faith can and should receive a meaning appropriate to the principles I have just affirmed.  There appear in some objects of faith two great qualities capable of making it triumph over reason, the one is incomprehensibility, the other is the lack of probability.  But one must beware of adding thereto the third quality whereof M. Bayle speaks, and of saying that what one believes is indefensible:  for that would be to cause reason in its turn to triumph in a manner that would destroy faith.  Incomprehensibility does not prevent us from believing even natural truths.  For instance (as I have already pointed out) we do not comprehend the nature of odours and savours, and yet we are persuaded, by a kind of faith which we owe to the evidence of the senses, that these perceptible qualities are founded upon the nature of things and that they are not illusions.

42.  There are also things contrary to appearances, which we admit when they are sufficiently verified.  There is a little romance of Spanish origin, whose title states that one must not always believe what one sees.  What was there more specious than the lie of the false Martin Guerre, who was acknowledged as the true Martin by the true Martin’s wife and [98] relatives, and caused the judges and the relatives to waver for a long time even after the arrival of the other?  Nevertheless the truth was known in the end.  It is the same with faith.  I have already observed that all one can oppose to the goodness and the justice of God is nothing but appearances, which would be strong against a man, but which are nullified when they are applied to God and when they are weighed against the proofs that assure us of the infinite perfection of his attributes.  Thus faith triumphs over false reasons by means of sound and superior reasons that have made us embrace it; but it would not triumph if the contrary opinion had for it reasons as strong as or even stronger than those which form the foundation of faith, that is, if there were invincible and conclusive objections against faith.

43.  It is well also to observe here that what M. Bayle calls a ’triumph of faith’ is in part a triumph of demonstrative reason against apparent and deceptive reasons which are improperly set against the demonstrations.  For it must be taken into consideration that the objections of the Manichaeans are hardly less contrary to natural theology than to revealed theology.  And supposing one surrendered to them Holy Scripture, original sin, the grace of God in Jesus Christ, the pains of hell and the other articles of our religion, one would not even so be delivered from their objections:  for one cannot deny that there is in the world physical evil (that is, suffering) and moral evil (that is, crime) and even that physical evil is not always distributed here on earth according to the proportion of moral evil, as it seems that justice demands.  There remains, then, this question of natural theology, how a sole Principle, all-good, all-wise and all-powerful, has been able to admit evil, and especially to permit sin, and how it could resolve to make the wicked often happy and the good unhappy?