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interesting. It is emphatic, trenchant and absolute. Its claims are such as were bound to appeal to intelligent Catholic ladies deprived of formal education and to laymen such as Montaigne’s father. It claimed to ‘illuminate’ Christians with a knowledge of God and themselves. It required no previous knowledge of Grammar, Logic, nor any other deliberative art or science, nor of Physics nor of Metaphysics – no Aristotle, therefore. It offered a method applicable to both clergy and laity. It promised certain results, ‘in less than a month, without toil and without learning anything off by heart. And once learned it is never forgotten.’ The
Natural Theology
was said to lead not only to knowledge but to morality, making whoever studied it ‘happy, humble, kind, obedient, loathing all vice and sin, loving all virtues, yet without puffing up with pride’.
    Montaigne did not essentially lessen this appeal but introduced changes in the Prologue (and, indeed, in the work itself) which show a sensitivity to theological distinctions. Where the Prologue was concerned, his changes were few but vital enough to restore it to undoubted orthodoxy. For example, where Raymond Sebond had written of his art as
‘necessary
to every man’, Montaigne made it merely
useful
. When Sebond claimed that his method taught ‘every duty’ required for the student Montaigne changed that to ‘nearly everything’. Sebond wrote:
     
In addition this science teaches everyone really to know, without difficulty or toil, every truth necessary to Man concerning both Man and God; and all things which are necessary to Man for his salvation, for making him perfect and for bringing him through to life eternal. And by this science a man learns, without difficulty and in reality, whatever is contained in Holy Scripture.
     
    *
    Montaigne tones that down:
     
In addition this science teaches everyone to see clearly, without difficulty or toil,
truth insofar as it is possible for natural reason
, concerning knowledge of God and of himself and of what he has need for his salvation and to reach life eternal;
it affords him access to understanding what is prescribed and commanded
in Holy Scripture.
     
    The words in italics are vital. In Montaigne’s hands the work of Sebond is presented as a means of access to truths and duties prescribed in Scripture. Sebond’s original Prologue could be taken to mean that his method stood alongside Scripture, independently. That of course would have been heretical if Sebond had been arguing from fallen natural reason. But he was not.
    Today we are so used to commercialized religious charlatanism that the claims of Sebond risk sounding like some slick, patent road to an illusory salvation. That is far from the truth. The
Natural Theology
is a cogently written work in scholastic Latin seeking to anchor the reader firmly within the Roman Catholic Faith, free from all wavering and doubt. The Prologue (in both the original and in Montaigne’s translation) ends with an uncompromising act of submission to the ‘Most Holy Church of Rome, the Mother of all faithful Christians, the Mistress of grace and faith, the Rule of Truth’.

    The method of Raymond Sebond is sufficiently complex to be misunderstood, not least by the many who were long deprived of his Prologue by the folly of censorship. Obviously even quite a few moderns writing on Montaigne have never been able to study it. 5
    Sebond firmly bases his method on ‘illumination’. He does not claim that human reason by itself can discover Christian truths. Quite the reverse. Without ‘illumination’ reason can understand nothing fundamental about the universe. But, duly illuminated, Man can come to know himself and his Creator as well as his religious and moral duties, which he will then love to fulfil. It is a method of freeing Man from doubts; it reveals the errors of pagan antiquity and its unenlightened philosophers; it teaches Catholic truth and shows up sects as