Richard Popkin's meticulous translation--the most complete since the eighteenth century--contains selections from thirty-nine articles, as well as from Bayle's four Clarifications. The bulk of the major articles of philosophical and theological interest--those that influenced Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, and Voltaire and formed the basis for so many eighteenth-century discussions--are present, including David, Manicheans, Paulicians, Pyrrho, Rorarius, Simonides, Spinoza, and Zeno of Elea.

"I tremble when I recall the terrible appearance [the comet] had on Saturday evening in the clear sky, when it was observed by everybody with inexpressible astonishment. It seemed as though the heavens were burning, or as if the very air was on fire...[F]rom this little star stretched out such a wonderfully long tail that even an intellectual man was overcome with trembling; one's hair stood on end as this uncommon, terrible, and indescribable tail came into view...O wonderful almighty God! The heavens show thy might and the earth thy handiwork!" — Eyewitness account of a comet which appeared over Europe on December 24, 1680 The appearance of this comet caused so many panicked inquiries to be made of Pierre Bayle, one of the Enlightenment's greatest thinkers, that he decided to formally respond to them, hence the present work, which first appeared in 1682. The book's principle task was to undermine the influence of "superstition" in political life, and it was here that Bayle made the notorious suggestion, unique in the history of political thought until then, that a decent society of atheists is possible in principle. There is no other English translation of this book in print—the only other version was printed in 1708. This translation is based on a recently revised critical edition of the complete French text and includes a substantial interpretive essay that both elucidates the arguments of the work and indicates the importance of Bayle in the history of the modern Enlightenment.

In his magnum opus, the Historical and Critical Dictionary, Pierre Bayle offered a series of brilliant criticisms of the major philosophical and theological systems of the 17th Century. Although officially skeptical concerning the attempt to provide a definitive account of the truths of metaphysics, there is reason to see Bayle as a reluctant skeptic. In particular, Todd Ryan contends that Bayle harbored deep sympathy for the attempt by Descartes and his most innovative successor, Nicolas Malebranche, to establish a metaphysical system that would provide a foundation for the new mechanistic natural philosophy while helping to secure the fundamental tenets of rational theology. Through a careful analysis of Bayle’s critical engagement with such philosophers as Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke and Newton, it is argued that, despite his reputation as a skeptic, Bayle was not without philosophical commitments of his own. Drawing on the full range of Bayle’s writings, from his early philosophical lectures to his final controversial writings, Ryan offers detailed studies of Bayle’s treatment of such pivotal issues as mind-body dualism, causation and God’s relation to the world.

"The topics of church and state, religious toleration, the legal enforcement of religious practices, and religiously motivated violence on the part of individuals, have once again become burning issues. Pierre Bayle's Philosophical Commentary was a major attempt to deal with very similar problems three centuries ago. His argument is that if the orthodox have the right and duty to persecute, then every sect will persecute since every sect considers itself orthodox. The result will be mutual slaughter, something God cannot have intended." "Bayle has often been seen as a skeptic who blazed a philosophical path that Denis Diderot, David Hume, and other Enlightenment thinkers would follow. But his was a philosophical skepticism that did not exclude the possibility of religious faith, and Bayle himself was a Calvinist Christian." "Bayle's book was translated into English in 1708. The Liberty Fund edition reprints that translation, carefully checked against the French and corrected, with an introduction and annotations designed to make Bayle's arguments accessible to the twenty-first-century reader." --Book Jacket.