M. Jeufroy’s answers were simple.
“Don’t worry yourself. By desiring to sift everything we rush along a perilous slope.”
The Catechism of Perseverance, by Gaume, had disgusted Pécuchet so much that he took up Louis Hervieu’s book. It was a summary of modern exegesis, prohibited by the government. Barberou, as a republican, had bought the book.
It awakened doubts in Bouvard’s mind, and, first of all, on original sin. “If God had created man peccable, He ought not to punish him; and evil is anterior to the Fall, since there were already volcanoes and wild beasts. In short, this dogma upsets my notions of justice.”
“What would you have?” said the curé. “It is one of those truths about which everybody is agreed, without being able to furnish proofs of it; and we ourselves make the crimes of their fathers rebound on the children. Thus morality and law justify this decree of Providence, since we find it in nature.”
Bouvard shook his head. He had also doubts about hell.
“For every punishment should look to the amelioration of the guilty person, which is impossible where the penalty is eternal; and how many are enduring it? Just think! All the ancients, the Jews, the Mussulmans, the idolaters, the heretics, and the children who have died without baptism—those children created by God, and for what end?—for the purpose of being punished for a sin which they did not commit!”
“Such is St. Augustine’s opinion,” added the curé; “and St. Fulgentius involves even the unborn child in damnation. The Church, it is true, has come to no decision on this matter. One remark, however. It is not God, but the sinner who damns himself; and the offence being infinite, since God is infinite, the punishment must be infinite. Is that all, sir?”
“Explain the Trinity to me,” said Bouvard.
“With pleasure. Let us take a comparison: the three sides of a triangle, or rather our soul, which contains being, knowing, and willing; what we call faculty in the case of man is person in God. There is the mystery.”