 Some of the most notorious remarks in the Dictionnaire are those in which Bayle details how a dualist could refute the traditional Christian accounts of the origin of evil, most of which begin from the story of the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Bayle begins his critique by asking how such a Fall was even metaphysically possible. If Adam and Eve were created wholly good, then they should not have had the capacity to sin, since such a capacity is hardly a good quality. But supposing an answer to this worry could be given, Bayle moves on to demand why God would permit the possibility of sin to reduce to an actual sin, considering the terrible consequences that befell humanity as a result of it. The most common response to this question was that God had given human beings free will, the most generous divine gift of all, and the autonomy of which God willed to respect in order to make true worship and love of him possible. Bayle’s response again focuses on the metaphysical possibility of the explanation: can a creature that derives all its being from God ever act in a manner that is truly free? Even supposing an account of freedom could be offered to answer this question, Bayle still finds the free-will defence unsatisfying on account of God’s alleged omniscience. Surely God foresaw the first sin of humankind from all eternity, yet he created humans with freedom anyway. Is this not comparable, Bayle asks, to supplying a criminal with a knife knowing full-well that he will commit murder with it? If so, the responsibility for the murder falls at least partially on the supplier of the weapon. But perhaps God allowed humans to fall so that he could send his Son to redeem them. To this last resort of the Christians-the felix culpa theodicy-Bayle observes that God in this case would resemble a father who allowed his son to break his arm (though he could have prevented it) just so that he could display his skill at cast-making to the neighbors. Or God would be like a king who permitted a deadly uprising just so he could demonstrate his ability to quell it. God would not appear infinitely perfect on any of these hypotheses. 