fagot has condemned its cruel authors and perpetrators to everlasting infamy-included extreme Manichean doctrines, so that its victorious prevalence would have been a great calamity to Europe. A rank form of infidelity, however, was the most aggressive and dangerous enemy of the Church. In Italy, in Spain, in France, it presented the boldest possible front against Christianity. It laid hold vaingloriously on the lately imported philosophy and dialectics of Aristotle-imported mainly through the medium of Arabian and Spanish sources; it reveled delightedly in those crude, but startling and fascinating, speculations which had been circulated more than a century earlier by the writings of Averrhoes, that Mohammedan philosopher, whose "portentous shade "-to quote some writer-was hovering balefully over Europe in the times of the great schoolmen; it welcomed with zest the half-rationalistic principles brilliantly insinuated by the popular Abelard, and audaciously pushed these to radical and dangerous results never contemplated by him. Abelard having reversed the motto of Anselm, and declared, "I will understand in order to believe" (although he then undertook to show that the substance of Christianity could really be demonstrated on principles of reason), these reckless disciples of his cried, "The doctrines of Christianity can not be understood, therefore they shall be rejected." The emperor, Frederick II, was a professed materialist, and adorned his splendid court at Naples not only with poets and scholars, but with the able defenders of rationalistic philosophies. At Florence, and in certain other cities, flourished secret societies, the object of whose existence was the artful propagation of atheism, or the resuscitation, should it be possible, of a long overthrown paganism. At the University of Paris scholarly and popular professors of theology were found, who inculcated, without restraint, from their chairs principles utterly subversive of Christianity. The Church, therefore (the Church of Rome), perceived that she must, of necessity, throw down the gage of battle to free thought in the form

of a speculative rationalism. An author (Dr. Newman, quoted by Vaughan) says of that period: "If ever there was a time when the intellect went wild and had a licentious revel, it was then. When was there a more curious, more meddling, bolder, keener, more penetrating, more rationalistic exercise of the reason than at that time? class of questions did that subtle, metaphysical spirit not scrutinize?" He continues, describing the policy of Rome in a way bearing precisely on that aim of scholasticism which is now under contemplation. "It was a time when

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the Church had temporal power, and could have exterminated the spirit of inquiry with fire and sword; but she determined to put it down by argument. She sent her controversialists into the philosophical arena. It was the Dominican and Franciscan Doctors, the greatest of these being St. Thomas, who, in those mediæval universities, fought the battle of revelation with the weapons of heathenism."

We are here led, then, to perceive the real meaning of the term "the Scholastic Philosophy." Whoever should suppose that by this name some school distinguished by peculiar fundamental doctrines in metaphysics is meant, as when we speak of the "Platonic Philosophy," or the "Hegelian Philosophy," or the "Scottish School of Philosophy," and who, with this hypothesis in mind, should go out to search for the relative place of scholasticism among such philosophical systems, would find himself entirely astray, and soon utterly bewildered. The name merely denotes that mighty system which prevailed in the Church in the Middle Ages, the aim of which was to organize theology, and to reconcile Christianity with reason through a metaphysical mode of justifying its principles. This latter aim did not, in itself, essentially differ from that which is conspicuously professed and undertaken by Mr. Joseph Cook in his discussions of theological subjects. It is a legitimate and noble aim, provided that in pursuing it two principles are not neglected. The first is, that the entire body of Christian truth is authoritatively revealed through divine

inspiration, and ought to be, and is rationally received upon faith; and that the philosophical justification of its doctrines. rationally follows, not precedes, the acceptance of it by faith (the principle which, no doubt, Anselm substantially intended by his celebrated maxim, "Credo ut intelligam"). The second is, that the limitation of the human faculties, especially as obscured and enfeebled by depravity, will probably render forever impracticable on earth the entire accomplishment of the task of Christian philosophy; that is, to vindicate every religious doctrine at the tribunal of independent reason. The former principle the scholastic philosophy not simply accepted, but uncompromisingly urged and insisted on. But in the application of this principle, this philosophy being Roman Catholic, fell into certain egregious and unhappy errors. In answer to the question, What is the range of the contents of that divine revelation which must be received implicitly upon faith? scholasticism said, It includes the Bible and tradition. The scholastic theologian, hence, felt as much bound to make the popish doctrines of purgatory, absolution by priests, the intercession of saints, and transubstantiation appear reasonable by some metaphysical plan of vindicating them, as to show the rationality of the doctrine of the divine existence. Not Scriptural theology, but ecclesiastical theology was that which must be accepted, unconditionally, by all men as true, and which must afterwards be proved by theological doctors to be philosophically true.

The latter of the principles named above, that of the limitation of the human faculties, scholasticism, as has been hinted, seems hardly ever to have even perceived. Hence, the undertaking to explain every thing rationally, and the entire confidence that this could be done. But it was just here scholasticism was betrayed into that all-pervading fallacy to which indirect allusion has been made. The purely a priori method of demonstrating divine truth professed by that system, could not be, as a general thing, in a true sense a priori. Because the issue of every course of reasoning

was always held to have been absolutely settled previously. Belief in the doctrine was despotically imposed by the principle of authority; it was, therefore, a fallacy to profess that this doctrine was about to be investigated by real a priori processes. The terminus ad quem having been absolutely determined beforehand, what was the force of saying to the reader, Let us now start at an a priori terminus a quo? These writers, however, undoubtedly imposed upon themselves, by their own fallacy, and were not guilty of intentionally attempting to delude their readers.

Closely related to the causes which involved the schoolmen in so radical an inconsistency, was another error, the undue dependence placed by them on the power of logic. Logic they held to be a real means of discovering truth, and they thought they used it as such. Whatever problem was undertaken to be solved by them, some metaphysical premises could be discovered somewhere, and then a defensible conclusion was only a matter of spinning out logic to a greater or less degree of tenuity. Many of the reasonings of these scholastics appear to us like interminable stairways from the earth up into the clouds; ladders on which no angels, so far as we can discern, come down from heaven, but on which these philosophers evidently believe that they, and we, if we will follow them, can climb up into heaven; or like pile upon pile of trellis-work, one story upon another, each successive tier becoming more slender and unsubstantial, the builders, however, plainly. cherishing implicit confidence that the process may be continued up into indefinite heights, and that the airiest and giddiest stages of the spindling fabric will be found as firm and trustworthy as the foundation tier.

It is an appropriate and almost unavoidable inquiry to raise once more as we come to our conclusion—the inquiry, indeed, with which this essay began-Of what significance has Aquinas been as an instrument in the hands of the Divine Architect of the kingdom of heaven on earth? For every man, good or evil, and whatever the intrinsic nature

and external characteristics of his work, is, of course, an instrument which Christ will in some way use for positively advancing the interests of his cause. Indeed, the somewhat paradoxical assertion lately met my eye, that the revelations of eternity will show more good to have been brought about by the combined agencies of the servants of Satan on earth, than by the entire numbers of the servants of Jesus, simply from the fact that the former are greatly in the majority. But it evidently would be unjust to say with respect to Aquinas that his influence as a man, a thinker, and a theological writer has been, and will in the end have been, only overruled by an all-controlling Providence for good. Though he zealously defended serious errors; though he justified theoretically the murder of heretics; though through certain speculations, in themselves comparatively innocent, he laid the foundations for the theoretical maintenance of the doctrine of indulgences; though he advanced in a speculative way some principles which might, perhaps, justly be termed Jesuitical; though in our own day he is relied upon as one of the strongest buttresses of Romish theology, with all its gigantic falsehoods; yet he deserves to be reckoned among good men, and among men whose voluntary and positive influence has been, in a large degree, upon the side of good. His personal character was saintly. spirit was Christ-like. His polemical productions—and all his works have a strong polemical element interwoven in their very structure-did much in the day when they appeared to expose and overthrow the rationalism and materialism which, by many insidious and threatening methods, were attacking the essential principles of Christianity; principles which, though intermixed with so much of shameful error were, after all, firmly grasped and maintained in the creed of the Catholic Church. His influence must have been prodigious in defeating the powerful agencies of active rationalism. The Reformation of the fifteenth century had a sufficiently tremendous work; its work would have been more difficult, perhaps a hopeless work, except for the

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