Socrate Chréstien

Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, Amsterdam, 1664 (Google Books)

This work is a series of discourses on Christian morality, with critiques concerning persecution, fanaticism, and inappropriate scholastic enquiries concerning matters of faith.  In his Dictionary historical and criticalfirst published in 1697,  Pierre Bayle praised the Socrate Chréstien for its skepticism and clear-eyed analysis.

For example, Balzac wrote in the fifth discourse of the Socrate,

They who have translated from one language into another with the greatest reputation, have mistaken rivers for mountains, and men for cities.  The mistakes of your Divines are not less than those.  Human reason falls into more strange mistakes when it treats of divine things: being weak and defective it ought to be cautious, and consider its own strength; it ought to be more discreet and reserved. . .

Balzac also considered it absurd that

 . . .  we undertake to discourse of his [God's] nature and his essence, to give an account of his conduct and designs, with the jargon of Aristotle’s Philosophy.

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