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Montaigne dismisses fairly curtly, though courteously, the first of the two criticisms made of Sebond.
     
The first charge is… that Christians do themselves wrong in wishing to support their belief with human reason: belief is grasped only by faith and by private inspiration from God’s grace.
     
    Montaigne’s reply is to accept ‘that purely human means’ are not enough; had they been so, ‘many choice and excellent souls in ancient times’ would have succeeded in reaching truth. But despite their integrity and their excellent natural faculties, the Ancients all failed in their ultimate quest: ‘Only faith can embrace, with a lively certainty, the high mysteries of our religion’ (‘Apology’, p. 492).
    That is quite orthodox. At least from the time of Thomas Aquinas it was held that natural reason ought to bring Man to the preambles of the Faith – that there is one God, that he is good, that he can be known from revelation – but that specifically Christian mysteries are hidden until revealed. 7 Montaigne may seem to put even those preambles in doubt, only to vindicate them triumphantly at the end of the ‘Apology’ with the aid of Plutarch.
    But Montaigne contrasts the routine practising Christian, merely accepting the local religion of Germany or Périgord in casual devotion, with what illuminated Christians are really like when ‘God’s light touches us even slightly’. Such Christians emanate brightness (‘Apology’, p. 493). The apprentice Christian may not rise so high but, once his heart is governed by Faith, it is reasonable for Faith to draw on his other capacities to support him. Sebond’s doctrine of illumination helps us to do so effectively and to draw religious strength from a knowledge of God’s creation:
     
[God] has left within these lofty works the impress of his Godhead: only our weakness stops us from discovering it. He tells us himself that he makes manifest his unseen workings through those things which are seen. (‘Apology’, p. 498)
     
    Montaigne turns to a key text of Scripture which he suitably cites. Sebond could toil to show that, to the enlightened Christian, ‘no piece within this world belies its Maker’ precisely because Scripture gives Man that assurance:
     
All things, Heaven, Earth, the elements, our bodies and our souls are in one accord: we simply have to find how to use them. If we have the capacity to understand, they will teach us. ‘The invisible things of God,’ says St Paul, ‘are clearly seen from the creation of the world, his Eternal Wisdom and his Godhead being perceived from the things he has made.’ (‘Apology’, p. 499)
     
    That quotation, adapted from the Vulgate Latin text of Romans I:20, is the foundation of all natural theology in the Renaissance. That can be seen from author after author, since Montaigne had chosen his scriptural authority well. He had selected the obvious text. In 1606, for example, George Pacard published his own
Théologie Naturelle
and placed Romans I:20 firmly on his title page, lending its tone to his whole book. A generation later Edward Chaloner could defend the general thesis of Montaigne here, with precisely this verse, in a sermon preached at All Souls College in Oxford. 8
    To make this point clear, Montaigne uses an analogy taken from Aristotelian physics, in which any object is composed of inert matter and a form which gives it its being.
     
Our human reasonings and concepts are like matter, heavy and barren: God’s grace is their form, giving them shape and worth. (‘Apology’, p. 499)
     
    Since men such as Socrates and Cato lacked God’s grace, even their most virtuous actions are without shape or ultimate value; in the context of salvation they ‘remain vain and useless’. So too with the themes of Sebond. By themselves they are heavy and barren. When Faith illuminates them, they become finger-posts setting man on the road which leads to his becoming ‘capable’ of God’s grace. 9 In the