Book of Essays 2 : Chapter 7 Summary and Analysis

This is a continuance of the Apology to Raymond Sebond. As already stated, this is the longest of the single pieces in the entire collection of writings. Montaigne reviews the book by Raymond Sebond in a manner that includes some criticisms. This is actually a discursive method, of a specific type. He writes of objections that can be made against Sebond's work and then he refutes them in a step by step manner. This resembles a methodology used by Saint Thomas Aquinas, a man whom the author clearly greatly admired. The first of these contains an objection that Sebond does not show Christianity as having any superiority to various types of paganism. Further, the objection runs that it does no good to attempt to support Christianity with rational judgments as the religion is dependent upon...