Are there not notions common to all men necessary to this purpose?
Yes; I have travelled with Paul Lucas, and wherever I went I saw that man respected his father and mother; that he thought himself bound to keep his promise; that he pitied oppressed innocence; that he detested persecution; that he regarded freedom of thinking as a right of nature, and the enemies of that freedom as the enemies of the human race. They who think differently appear to me to be badly organized, and monsters, like those who are born without eyes or heads.
These necessary things--are they necessary in all times, and in all places?
Yes: otherwise they would not be necessary to human kind.
Therefore, a new creed is not necessary to mankind. Men could live in society, and perform all their duties towards God, before they believed that Mahomet had frequent conversations with the angel Gabriel.
Nothing is more evident; it would be ridiculous to think that man could not perform his duties until Mahomet came into the world. It was no way necessary for men to believe the Koran. The world went on before the appearance of Mahomet, precisely as at present. If Mahometanism was necessary to the world, it would exist everywhere. God, who has given us two eyes to see the sun, would have bestowed upon us some means of discovering the truths of the Mahometan religion. That sect therefore resembles the arbitrary laws which change according to times and places, like fashions or the theories of physicians, which displace and succeed one another. The Mahometan religion cannot therefore be essentially necessary to man.
But since it exists, God has permitted it.
Yes, as He permits all the world to abound in absurdities, errors, and calamities. This is not saying that men were absolutely created in order to be foolish and unhappy. God permits some men to be eaten by serpents, but we ought not to say that God made man to be eaten by serpents.
What do you mean by saying that God permits? Can anything happen but by His orders? To permit and to will--are they not with Him the same thing?
He permits crime, but does not commit it.
To commit a crime is to act against Divine justice--to disobey God. Therefore, as God cannot disobey Himself, He cannot commit crime; but He has so made man that man commits it frequently. How does that arise?