This tendency of men to make mistakes in presenting the opinions of others leads me to observe also, that when I said somewhere that man helps himself in conversion through the succour of grace, I mean only that he derives advantage from it through the cessation of the resistance overcome, but without any cooperation on his part: just as there is no co-operation in ice when it is broken. For conversion is purely the work of God's grace, wherein man co-operates only by resisting it; but human resistance is more or less great according to the persons and the occasions. Circumstances also contribute more or less to our attention and to the motions that arise in the soul; and the co-operation of all these things, together with the strength of the impression and the condition of the will, determines the operation of grace, although not rendering it necessary. I have expounded sufficiently elsewhere that in relation to matters of salvation unregenerate man is to be considered as dead; and I greatly approve the manner wherein the theologians of the Augsburg Confession declare themselves on this subject. Yet this corruption of unregenerate man is, it must be added, no hindrance to his possession of true moral virtues and his performance of good actions in his civic life, actions which spring from a good principle, without any evil intention and without mixture of actual sin. Wherein I hope I shall be forgiven, if I have dared to diverge from the opinion of St. Augustine: he was doubtless a great man, of admirable intelligence, but inclined sometimes, as it seems, to exaggerate things, above all in the heat of his controversies. I greatly esteem some persons who profess to be disciples of St. Augustine, amongst others the Reverend Father Quênel, a worthy successor of the great Arnauld in the pursuit of controversies that have embroiled them with the most famous of Societies. But I have found that usually in disputes between people of conspicuous merit (of whom there are doubtless some here in both parties) there is right on both sides, although in different points, and it is rather in the matter of defence than attack, although the natural malevolence of the human heart generally renders attack more agreeable to the reader than defence. I hope that the Reverend Father Ptolemei, who does his Society credit and is occupied in filling the gaps left by the famous Bellarmine, will give us, concerning all of that, some explanations worthy of his acumen and his knowledge, and I even dare to add, his moderation. And one must believe that among the theologians of the Augsburg Confession there will arise some new Chemnitz or some new Callixtus; even as one is justified in thinking that men like Usserius or Daillé will again appear among the Reformed, and that all will work more and more to remove the misconceptions wherewith this matter is charged. For the rest I shall be well pleased that those who shall wish to examine it closely read the objections with the answers I have given thereto, formulated in the small treatise I have placed at the end of the work by way of summary. I have endeavoured to forestall some new objections. I have explained, for instance, why I have taken the antecedent and consequent will as preliminary and final, after the example of Thomas, of Scotus and others; how it is possible that there be incomparably more good in the glory of all the saved than there is evil in the misery of all the damned, despite that there are more of the latter; how, in saying that evil has been permitted as a conditio sine qua non of good, I mean not according to the principle of necessity, but according to the principle of the fitness of things. Furthermore I show that the predetermination I admit is such as always to predispose, but never to necessitate, and that God will not refuse the requisite new light to those who have made a good use of that which they had. Other elucidations besides I have endeavoured to give on some difficulties which have been put before me of late. I have, moreover, followed the advice of some friends who thought it fitting that I should add two appendices: the one treats of the controversy carried on between Mr. Hobbes and Bishop Bramhall touching Freedom and Necessity, the other of the learned work on The Origin of Evil, published a short time ago in England.
Finally I have endeavoured in all things to consider edification: and if I have conceded something to curiosity, it is because I thought it necessary to relieve a subject whose seriousness may cause discouragement. It is with that in view that I have introduced into this dissertation the pleasing chimera of a certain astronomical theology, having no ground for apprehension that it will ensnare anyone and deeming that to tell it and refute it is the same thing. Fiction for fiction, instead of imagining that the planets were suns, one might conceive that they were masses melted in the sun and thrown out, and that would destroy the foundation of this hypothetical theology. The ancient error of the two principles, which the Orientals distinguished by the names Oromasdes and Arimanius, caused me to explain a conjecture on the primitive history of peoples. It appears indeed probable that these were the names of two great contemporary princes, the one monarch of a part of upper Asia, where there have since been others of this name, the other king of the Scythian Celts who made incursions into the states of the former, and who was also named amongst the divinities of Germania. It seems, indeed, that Zoroaster used the names of these princes as symbols of the invisible powers which their exploits made them resemble in the ideas of Asiatics. Yet elsewhere, according to the accounts of Arab authors, who in this might well be better informed than the Greeks, it appears from detailed records of ancient oriental history, that this Zerdust or Zoroaster, whom they make contemporary with the great Darius, did not look upon these two principles as completely primitive and independent, but as dependent upon one supreme and single principle. They relate that he believed, in conformity with the cosmogony of Moses, that God, who is without an equal, created all and separated the light from the darkness; that the light conformed with his original design, but that the darkness came as a consequence, even as the shadow follows the body, and that this is nothing but privation. Such a thesis would clear this ancient author of the errors the Greeks imputed to him. His great learning caused the Orientals to compare him with the Mercury or Hermes of the Egyptians and Greeks; just as the northern peoples compared their Wodan or Odin to this same Mercury. That is why Mercredi (Wednesday), or the day of Mercury, was called Wodansdag by the northern peoples, but day of Zerdust by the Asiatics, since it is named Zarschamba or Dsearschambe by the Turks and the Persians, Zerda by the Hungarians from the north-east, and Sreda by the Slavs from the heart of Great Russia, as far as the Wends of the Luneburg region, the Slavs having learnt the name also from the Orientals. These observations will perhaps not be displeasing to the curious. And I flatter myself that the small dialogue ending the Essays written to oppose M. Bayle will give some satisfaction to those who are well pleased to see difficult but important truths set forth in an easy and familiar way. I have written in a foreign language at the risk of making many errors in it, because that language has been recently used by others in treating of my subject, and because it is more generally read by those whom one would wish to benefit by this small work. It is to be hoped that the language errors will be pardoned: they are to be attributed not only to the printer and the copyist, but also to the haste of the author, who has been much distracted from his task. If, moreover, any error has crept into the ideas expressed, the author will be the first to correct it, once he has been better informed: he has given elsewhere such indications of his love of truth that he hopes this declaration will not be regarded as merely an empty phrase.
PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION ON THE CONFORMITY OF FAITH WITH REASON
1. I begin with the preliminary question of the conformity of faith with reason, and the use of philosophy in theology, because it has much influence on the main subject of my treatise, and because M. Bayle introduces it everywhere. I assume that two truths cannot contradict each other; that the object of faith is the truth God has revealed in an extraordinary way; and that reason is the linking together of truths, but especially (when it is compared with faith) of those whereto the human mind can attain naturally without being aided by the light of faith. This definition of reason (that is to say of strict and true reason) has surprised some persons accustomed to inveigh against reason taken in a vague sense. They gave me the answer that they had never heard of any such explanation of it: the truth is that they have never conferred with people who expressed themselves clearly on these subjects. They have confessed to me, nevertheless, that one could not find fault with reason, understood in the sense which I gave to it. It is in the same sense that sometimes reason is contrasted with experience. Reason, since it consists in the linking together of truths, is entitled