knows that they are in conformity with reason.  He affirms the first and denies the second.  I am of the same opinion, if in saying ‘that a dogma conforms to reason’ one means that it is possible to account for it or to explain its how by reason; for God could doubtless do so, and we cannot.  But I think that one must affirm both theses if by [107] ‘knowing that a dogma conforms to reason’ one means that we can demonstrate, if need be, that there is no contradiction between this dogma and reason, repudiating the objections of those who maintain that this dogma is an absurdity.

61.  M. Bayle explains himself here in a manner not at all convincing.  He acknowledges fully that our Mysteries are in accordance with the supreme and universal reason that is in the divine understanding, or with reason in general; yet he denies that they are in accordance with that part of reason which man employs to judge things.  But this portion of reason which we possess is a gift of God, and consists in the natural light that has remained with us in the midst of corruption; thus it is in accordance with the whole, and it differs from that which is in God only as a drop of water differs from the ocean or rather as the finite from the infinite.  Therefore Mysteries may transcend it, but they cannot be contrary to it.  One cannot be contrary to one part without being contrary to the whole.  That which contradicts a proposition of Euclid is contrary to the Elements of Euclid.  That which in us is contrary to the Mysteries is not reason nor is it the natural light or the linking together of truths; it is corruption, or error, or prejudice, or darkness.

62.  M. Bayle (p. 1002) is not satisfied with the opinion of Josua Stegman and of M. Turretin, Protestant theologians who teach that the Mysteries are contrary only to corrupt reason.  He asks, mockingly, whether by right reason is meant perchance that of an orthodox theologian and by corrupt reason that of an heretic; and he urges the objection that the evidence of the Mystery of the Trinity was no greater in the soul of Luther than in the soul of Socinius.  But as M. Descartes has well observed, good sense is distributed to all:  thus one must believe that both the orthodox and heretics are endowed therewith.  Right reason is a linking together of truths, corrupt reason is mixed with prejudices and passions.  And in order to discriminate between the two, one need but proceed in good order, admit no thesis without proof, and admit no proof unless it be in proper form, according to the commonest rules of logic.  One needs neither any other criterion nor other arbitrator in questions of reason.  It is only through lack of this consideration that a handle has been given to the sceptics, and that even in theology Francois Veron and some others, who [108] exacerbated the dispute with the Protestants, even to the point of dishonesty, plunged headlong into scepticism in order to prove the necessity of accepting an infallible external judge.  Their course meets with no approval from the most expert, even in their own party:  Calixtus and Daille derided it as it deserved, and Bellarmine argued quite otherwise.