Nam cupide conculcatur nimis anti metutum. Wherein he seemed to be well advised, as he 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 apparances, 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 t hat 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. 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.
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.
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. As for mee I love them indeed, but yet I worship them not. 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. Which if it be it is subject to a large interpretation. 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.
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