The Complete Essays Read Online Free Page B

errors and lies. It does all these things by teaching the Christian the ‘alphabet’ which must be acquired if one is to read Nature aright. The science ‘teaches Man to know himself, to know why he was created and by Whom; to know his good, his evil and his duty; by what and to Whom he is bound. What good are the other sciences to a man who is ignorant of such things?’
    ‘The other sciences’, when this basis is lacking, are but vanity. They lead to error, men not knowing ‘whither they are going, whence they came’ nor what Man is. Sebond shows Man how far he has fallen and how he can be reformed.
    Raymond Sebond believes that God has given Man two Books, a metaphorical one and a real one. The first is the ‘Book of all Creatures’ or the ‘Book of Nature’. The second is Holy Scripture. The first Book to be given Man – at the Creation – was the Book of Nature. In it all created things are like letters of the alphabet; they can be combined into words and sentences, teaching Man truths about God and himself. But with the Fall, Man was blinded to the sense of the Book of Nature. He could no longer read it aright. Nevertheless, that book remains common to all.
    The Second Book, Holy Writ, is not common to all – ‘to read the second book one must be a clerk’. Yet (unlike Scripture) the Book of Nature cannot be falsified; it cannot lead to heresy. Yet in fact both Books teach the same lesson (since the same God created all things in due order and revealed the Scriptures). They cannot contradict each other, even though the first is natural – of one nature with us Men – while the other is above all Nature, supernatural.
    Now, Man was created in the beginning as a reasonable creature, capable of learning. But at his creation, Man – Sebond means Adam – knew nothing whatever. ‘Since no doctrine can be acquired without books’, it was most appropriate that Divine Wisdom should create this Book of Creatures in which Man, on his own, without a teacher, could study the doctrines requisite for him. It was the visible ‘letters’ of this Book – the ‘creatures’ placed in God’s good order, not our own – that Man was intended to read, using the pre-lapsarian judgement which God had bestowed on him when he was newly created.
    But since the Fall all that has changed. Man can no longer find God’s truths in Nature, ‘unless he is enlightened by God and cleansed of original sin. 6 And therefore not one of the pagan philosophers of Antiquity could read this science, because they were blinded concerning the sovereign good, even though they did read some sort of science in this Book and derived whatever they did have from it.’ But the solid, true science which leads to life eternal – even though it was written there – they were unable to read.
    In Montaigne’s hands Raymond Sebond’s method shows enlightened Christians that the revealed truths about God and man are consonant with the Book of Nature properly read. It reconciles observed nature with revealed truth and so can lead men to accept it without doubt or hesitation.
    Montaigne’s ‘Apology’ is a defence of this doctrine, and corresponds to the two assertions of Sebond: i: Man, when enlightened, can once again read the Book of Nature aright; ii: Man when not enlightened by God’s grace can never be sure he has read it aright: Mankind has read ‘some sort of science’ in this Book of Nature but is ‘unable to read’ that ‘true science which leads to life eternal’. This means that unenlightened Man, Man left to his own devices, can no longer ‘read’ God’s creatures – and creatures covers not only plants and animals but the Universe and everything in it – the letters of that alphabet appear all jumbled up. No longer can Man be sure he has any knowledge of himself or of any created thing or being, from the highest heavens to the tiniest ant.
    The two main sections of the ‘Apology’ are of widely different lengths.