[Alongside the theology of free will and predestination lay the juridical question of an individual's responsibility for his harmful acts, and whether other factors, such as grace or destiny, played a part. Bayle uses this piece to show that there were better and worse ways of handling the problem. This irreconcilable debate was familiar because of the dispute between Jansenists and Jesuits, satirised in Pascal's Lettres provinciales (1656–9). Bayle proposes (in Remark (C), and n. 10=23) that if progress were to be made, it would be by employing the cosmologists' method of exploring rival propositions as hypotheses. By applying to dogmatic theology the method of critical science Bayle can avoid saying that certain truth is never attainable in some matters. At the same time, he can show that honest support for a mistaken theory should never, in justice, be a civil offence.]