The Sequel to the Count of Gabalis, or New Discourses on the Secret Sciences

On the Secret Sciences.

this and of your friendship. I give them to you, he said to me, placing his hand in mine. You even seem to me a suitable candidate for the great designs I have formed since my youth. Your Morality is good, since you suffer insults without being moved; and your Philosophy may become so, since you are not infatuated with Aristotle. Ah! Aristotle, how much harm you have done to good morals, and how well-inspired by Heaven were the Councils Likely a reference to the 13th-century condemnations in Paris, where Aristotle’s works on natural philosophy were temporarily banned for fear they contradicted Christian doctrine. that formerly forbade reading you! Are you not of this opinion, Sir? Is Aristotle not pernicious to Morality?

Pernicious, I replied, Sir, most pernicious original: "du dernier pernicieux," an idiom meaning pernicious in the highest degree..

And do you not find the age, he continued, horribly corrupt?

Horribly, I replied.

And would you not willingly become, he went on, the Disciple and Assistant of a man extraordinarily raised up by the Holy Spirit for the general reform of morals?

Provided it were neither Luther, nor Calvin, I replied, nor any other man of that kind, I have quite a penchant for correcting.

It is, said he, the most laudable inclination a Christian can have: one must think only of—