This assertion may be true, says Voltaire, and hence God would have prevented all sin, if his power had not been limited. The only conceivable way, says he, to reconcile the existence of sin with the purity of God, is “to deny his omnipotence.” We insist, on the contrary, that the power of God is absolutely without bounds or limits. Though sin exists, we still maintain, in opposition to every form of atheism, that this fact implies no limitation of any of the perfections of God. Before proceeding to establish this position, we shall consider the usual reply of the theist to the great argument of the atheist. “The greatest love which a ruler can show for virtue,” says Bayle, “is to cause it, if he can, to be always practised without any mixture of vice. If it is easy for him to procure this advantage to his subjects, and he nevertheless permits vice to raise its head in his dominions, intending to punish it after having tolerated it for a long time, his affection for virtue is not the greatest of which we can conceive; _it is then not infinite_.” This has been the great standing argument of atheism in all ages of the world. This argument, as held by the atheists of antiquity, is presented by Cudworth in the following words: “The supposed Deity and Maker of the world was either willing to abolish all evils, but not able; or he was able but not willing; or else, lastly, he was both able and willing. This latter is the only thing that answers fully to the notion of a God. Now that the supposed Creator of all things was not thus both able and willing to abolish all evils, is plain, because then there would have been no evils at all left. Wherefore, since there is such a deluge of evils overflowing all, it must needs be that either he was willing, and not able to remove them, and then he was impotent; or else he was able and not willing, and then he was envious; or, lastly, he was neither able nor willing, and then he was both impotent and envious.” This argument is, in substance, the same as that presented by Bayle, and relied upon by atheists in all subsequent times.