Knowledge is without all Contradiction a most profitable and chiefe ornament, Those who despise it declare evidently their sottishnesse: Yet doe not I value it at so excessive a rate as some have done; namely Herillus the Philosopher, who grounded his chiefe felicitie upon it, and held that it lay in her power to make us content and wise: which I cannot beleeve, nor that which others have said, that Knowledge is the mother of all vertue, and that all vice proceedeth of ignorance. Which if it be it is subject to a large interpretation. My house hath long since ever stood open to men of understanding, and is very well knowne to many of them: for my father, who commanded the same fifty yeeres and upward, set on fire by that new kinde of earnestnesse wherewith King Francis the first imbraced Letters, and raised them unto credit, did with great diligence and much cost endevour to purchase the acquaintance of learned men; receiving and entertaining them as holy persons, and who had some particular inspiration of divine wisdom; collecting their sentences and discourses as if they had beene Oracles; and with so much more reverence and religious regard by how much lesse authority hee had to judge of them: for hee had no knowledge of Letters no more than his predecessors before him. As for mee I love them indeed, but yet I worship them not. Amongst others, Peter Bunel (a man in his time by reason of his learning of high esteeme) having sojourned a few daies at Montaigne with my father and others of his coat being ready to depart thence, presented him with a booke entituled Theologia naturalis; sive liber creaturarum magistri Raimondi de Sebonde. And for so much as the Italian and Spanish tongues were very familiar unto him, and that the book was written in a kinde of latinized Spanish, whereof divers words had Latine terminations; he hoped that with little aid he might reape no small profit by it, and commended the same very much unto him, as a booke most profitable, and fitting the dayes in which he gave it him. It was even at what time the new fangles of Luther began to creepe in favour, and in many places to shake the foundation of our ancient beleefe. Wherein he seemed to be well advised, as be who by discourse of reason fore-saw that this budding disease would easily turne to an execrable Atheisme: For the vulgar wanting the faculty to judge of things by themselves, suffering it selfe to be carried away by fortune and led on by outward appamraces, if once it be possessed with the boldnesse to despise and malapertnesse to impugne the opinions which tofore it held in awful reverence (as are those wherein consisteth their salvation) and that some articles of their religion be made doubtfull and questionable, they will soon and easily admit an equal uncertainty in all other parts of their beleefe, as they that had no other grounded authoritie or foundation but such as are now shaken and weakned, and immediately reject (as a tyrannical yoke) all impressions they had in former times received by the authoritie of Lawes, or reverence of ancient custome.
Nam cupide conculcatur nimis anti metutum.
That which we fear'd before too much,
We gladly scorne when tis not such.
—Lucretius, 1. v. 1150.
Undertaking thenceforward to allow of nothing, except they have first given their voice and particular consent to the same.
My father, a few daies before his death, lighting by chance upon this booke, which before he had neglected, amongst other writings commanded mee to translate the same into French. It is easie to translate such Authors, where nothing but the matter is to be represented; but hard and dangerous to undertake such as have added much to the grace and elegancy of the language, namely to reduce them into a weaker and poorer tongue. It was a strange taske and new occupation for me: but by fortune being then at leisure and unable to gainsay the commandement of the best father that ever was, I came ere long (as well as I could) to an end of it: wherein he toook singular delight, and commanded the same to be printed, which accordingly was after his decease performed.
I found the conceits of the author to be excellent, the contexture of his worke well followed, and his project full of pietie. Now forasmuch as divers ammuse themselves to reade it, and especially Ladies, to whom we owne most service, it hath often beene my hap to help them, when they were reading it, to discharge the booke of two principall objections, which are brought against the same. His drift is bold, and his scope adventurous for he undertaketh by humane and naturall reasons, to establish and verifie all the articles of Christian religion against Atheists. Wherein (to say truth) I find him so resolute and so happy, as I deem it a thing impossible to doe better in that argument, and thinke that none equalleth him. Which booke seeming to me both over-rich and exquisite, being written by an author whose name is so little knowne, and of whom all we know is, that be was a Spaniard, who about two hundred yeeres since professed Physicke in Tholouse: I demanded once of Adrianus Turnebus (a man who knew all things) what such a booke might be; who answered, that he deemed the same to be some Quintessence extracted from out Saint Thomes Aquinas: For, in good truth, onely such a spirit fraught with so infinite erudition, and so full admirable subtilities was capable of such and so rare imitiations. So it is, that whosoever be the author or deviser of it (the title whereof ought not without further reason to be taken from Sebond) he was a very sufficient-worthie man, and endowed with sundrie other excellent qualities.