54.  Celsus brings up still another objection to the Christians, in the same place.  ‘If they withdraw’, he says, ’regularly into their “Examine not, only believe”, they must tell me at least what are the things they wish me to believe.’  Therein he is doubtless right, and that tells against those who would say that God is good and just, and who yet would maintain that we have no notion of goodness and of justice when we attribute these perfections to him.  But one must not always demand what I call ’adequate notions’, involving nothing that is not explained, since even perceptible qualities, like heat, light, sweetness, cannot give us such notions.  Thus we agreed that Mysteries should receive an explanation, but this explanation is imperfect.  It suffices for us to have some analogical understanding of a Mystery such as the Trinity and the Incarnation, to the end that in accepting them we pronounce not words altogether devoid of meaning:  but it is not necessary that the explanation go as far as we would wish, that is, to the extent of comprehension and to the how.

55.  It appears strange therefore that M. Bayle rejects the tribunal of common notions (in the third volume of his Reply to the Questions of a Provincial, pp. 1062 and 1140) as if one should not consult the idea of goodness in answering the Manichaeans; whereas he had declared himself quite differently in his Dictionary.  Of necessity there must be agreement upon the meaning of good and bad, amongst those who are in dispute[104] over the question whether there is only one principle, altogether good, or whether there are two, the one good and the other bad.  We understand something by union when we are told of the union of one body with another or of a substance with its accident, of a subject with its adjunct, of the place with the moving body, of the act with the potency; we also mean something when we speak of the union of the soul with the body to make thereof one single person.  For albeit I do not hold that the soul changes the laws of the body, or that the body changes the laws of the soul, and I have introduced the Pre-established Harmony to avoid this derangement, I nevertheless admit a true union between the soul and the body, which makes thereof a suppositum.  This union belongs to the metaphysical, whereas a union of influence would belong to the physical.  But when we speak of the union of the Word of God with human nature we should be content with an analogical knowledge, such as the comparison of the union of the soul with the body is capable of giving us.  We should, moreover, be content to say that the Incarnation is the closest union that can exist between the Creator and the creature; and further we should not want to go.