The antiquity of the Kabbalah is necessary to work his hypothesis, and he assumes it as if unaware that its antiquity had ever been impugned.

There may be much to be said upon both sides of this hotly-debated question, but there is nothing to be said for a writer who seems ignorant that there is a question.

And hence my readers will in no way be astonished to learn that his information is obtained at second-hand, or that his one authority is Franck.

This fact is the key to his entire work, and the sole credit that is due to him is the skilful appearance of erudition which he has given to a shallow performance, and the natural mental elegance which has prevented him from being noisy and violent.
Our inquiry into modern devil-worship does not warrant us in discussing the position of writers who choose to assume that the Kabbalah, Gnosticism, and other systems are _a priori_ diabolical, because assumptions of this kind are unreasonable.

There are writers at this moment in France who argue that the English word God is the equivalent of Lucifer, but one does not dispute with these.