Note 3 — FREDERIC THE GREAT’S EULOGY ON JULIEN OFFRAY DE LA METTRIE.

If there is a revelation, it can not then contradict nature. By nature only can we understand the meaning of the words of the Gospel, of which experience is the only true interpreter. In fact, the commentators before our time have only obscured the truth. We can judge of this by the author of the “Spectacle of Nature.”3 “It is astonishing,” he says concerning Locke, “that a man who degrades our soul far enough to consider it a soul of clay should dare set up reason as judge and sovereign arbiter of the mysteries of faith, for,” he adds, “what an astonishing idea of Christianity one would have, if one were to follow reason.”