XIII. CENT. writings of the fathers, and who acquired on that account the name of Biblicists, diminished from day to day. It is true indeed, that several persons of eminent piety [y], and even some of the Roman pontifs [x], exhorted with great seriousness and warmth the scholastic divines, and more especially those of the university of Paris, to change their method of teaching theology, and laying aside their philosophical abstraction and subtilty, to deduce the sublime science of salvation from the holy scriptures with that purity and simplicity with which it was there delivered by the inspired writers. But these admonitions and exhortations were without effect; the evil was become too inveterate to admit of a remedy, and the passion for logic and metaphysic was grown so universal and so violent, that neither remonstrances nor arguments could check its presumption, or allay its ardour. In justice however to the scholastic doctors, it is necessary to observe, that they did not neglect the dictates of the gospel, nor the authority of tradition; though what they drew from these two sources proves sufficiently that they had studied neither with much attention or application of mind [a]. And it is moreover certain, that, in process of time, they committed [y] See Du BOULAY, Hist. Acad. Paris. tom. iii. p. 9. 129. 180.-ANT. WOOD, Antiqq. Oxoniens. tom. i. p. 91. 92. 94. [x] See the famous epistle of GREGORY IX. to the professors in the university of Paris, published in DU BOULAY's Histor. Acad. Paris. tom. iii. p. 129. The pontif concludes that remarkable epistle with the following words: "Mandamus et strictè præcipimus, quatenus sine fermento mundanæ scientiæ, deceatis Theologicam puritatem non adulterantės verbum Dei Philosophorum figmentis...sed contenti terminus a patribus institutis mentes auditorum vestrorum fructu cœlestis eloquii saginetis, ut hauriant a fontibus salvatoris. [a] FAYDIT, Alteration du Dogme Theologique par la Philosophie d'Aristote, p. 289.-RICHARD SIMON, Critique de la Bibliotheque des Auteurs Eccles. par M. Du PIN, tom. i. p. 170. 187. XIII. PART II. committed to others the care of consulting the c ENT. sources now mentioned, and reserved to themselves the much-respected province of philosophy, and the intricate mazes of dialectical chicane. And, indeed, independent of their philosophical vanity, we may assign another reason for this method of proceeding, drawn from the nature of their profession, and the circumstances in which they were placed. For the greatest part of these subtile doctors were Dominicans or Franciscan friars; and as the monks of these Orders had no possessions, not even libraries, and led, besides, wandering and itinerant lives, such of them as were ambitious of literary fame, and of the honours of authorship, were, for the most part, obliged to draw their materials from their own genius and memory, being destitute of all other succours. made to the VIII. The opinions which these philosophical Much opdivines instilled into the minds of the youth, ap- position peared to the votaries of the ancient fathers highly scholastic dangerous and even pernicious; and hence they doctors. used their utmost efforts to stop the progress of these opinions, and to diminish the credit and inHuence of their authors. Nor was their opposition at all ill-grounded; for the subtile doctors of the school not only explained the mysteries of religion in a manner conformable to the principles of their presumptuous logic, and modified them according to the dictates of their imperfect reason, but also propagated the most impious sentiments and tenets concerning the Supreme Being, the material world, the origin of the universe, and the nature of the soul. And when it was objected to these sentiments and tenets, that they were in direct contradiction to the genius of Christianity, and to the express doctrines of scripture, these scholastic quibblers had recourse, for a reply, or rather for a method of escape, to that PART II. CENT. that perfidious distinction, which has been fre XIII. quently employed by modern deists, that these tenets were philosophically true, and conformable to right reason, but that they were, indeed, theologically false, and contrary to the orthodox faith. This kindled an open war between the Biblicists, or Bible-divines, and the scholastic doctors, which was carried on with great warmth throughout the whole course of this century, particularly in the universities of Oxford and Paris, where we find the former loading the latter with the heaviest reproaches in their public acts and in their polemic writings, and accusing them of corrupting the doctrines of the gospel both in their public lessons and in their private discourse [b]: Even St THOMAS himself was accused of holding opinions contrary to the truth; his orthodoxy, at least, was looked upon as extremely dubious by many of the Parisian doctors [c]. He accordingly saw a formidable scene of opposition arising against him, but had the good fortune to conjure the storm, and to escape untouched. Others, whose authority was less extensive and their names less respectable, were treated with more severity. The living were obliged to confess publicly their errors; and the dead, who had persevered in them to the last, had their memories branded with infamy. The mys the school IX. But the most formidable adversaries the tics oppose scholastic doctors had to encounter, were the Mystics, who, rejecting every thing that had the least resemblance of argumentation or dispute about men. matters [b] See MATTH. PARIS, Histor. Major. p. 541.-BOULAY, Hist. Acad. Paris. tom. iii. p. 397.430.433. 472, &c. [c] See Jo. LAUNOII Histor. Gymnans. Navarreni, part III. lib. iii. cap. cxvi. tom. iv. opp. part I. p. 485.-BOULAY, Histor. Acad. Paris. tom. iv. p. 204.-PETRI ZORNI Opuscula Sacra tom. i. p. 445.-R. SIMON, Lettres Choisies, tom. ii. p. 266.--ECHARDI Scriptor. Ordin. Prædicator, tom. i. p. 435. XIII. matters of doctrine and opinion, confined their c E N T. endeavours to the advancement of inward piety, PART II. and the propagation of devout and tender feelings, and thus acquired the highest degree of popularity. The people, who are much more affected with what touches their passions, than with what is only addressed to their reason, were attached to the Mystics in the warmest manner; and this gave such weight to the reproaches and invectives which they threw out against the school-men, that the latter thought it more prudent to disarm these favourites of the multitude by mild and submissive measures, than to return their reproaches with indignation and bitterness. They accordinly set themselves to flatter the Mystics, and not enly extolled their sentimental system, but employed their pens in illustrating and defending it; nay, they associated it with the scholastic philosophy, though they were as different from each other as any two things could possibly be. It is well known that BONAVENTURA, ALBERT the Great, ROBERT CAPITO, and THOMAS AQUINAS contributed to this reconciliation between Mysticism and Dialectics by their learned labours, and even went so far as to write commentaries upon DIONASIUS, the chief of the Mystics, whom these subtile doctors probably looked upon with a secret contempt. of Chris X. Both the school-men and mystics of this The state century treated, in their writings, of the obliga-an morations of morality, the duties of the Christian life, lity. and of the means that were most adapted to preserve or deliver the soul from the servitude and contagion of vice; but their methods of handling these important subjects were, as may be easily conceived, entirely different. We may form an idea of mystical morality from the Observations of GEORGE PACHYMERES, upon the writings of Dionysius, and from the Spiritual Institutes, or Abridg ment PARTI. As CENT.ment of Mystic Theology composed by HUMBERT XIII. DE ROMANIS, of which productions the first was written in Greek, and the second in Latin. to the scholastic moralists, they were principally employed in defining the nature of virtue and vice in general, and the characters of the various virtues and vices in particular; and hence the prodigious number of sums, or systematical collections of virtues and vices, that appeared in this century. The school-men divided the virtues into two classes. The first comprehended the moral virtues, which differ, in no respect, from those which ARISTOTLE recommended to his disciples. The second contained the theological virtues, which, in consequence of what St PAUL says, I Corinth. xiii. 13. they made to consist in Faith, Hope, and Charity. In explaining and illustrating the nature of the virtues comprehended in these two classes, they seemed rather to have in view the pleasure of disputing than the design of instructing; and they exhausted all their subtilty in resolving difficulties which were of their own creation. THOMAS AQUINAS shone forth as a star of the first magnitude, though, like the others, he was often covered with impenetrable fogs. The second part of his famous sum was wholly employed in laying down the principles of morality, and in deducing and illustrating the various duties that result from them; and this part of his learned labours has had the honour and misfortune of passing through the hands of a truly prodigious number of commentators. An impor tant re mark relat XI. It is absolutely necessary to observe here, that the moral writers of this and the following ing to the centuries must be read with the utmost caution; manner of and with a perpetual attention to this circummorals in stance, that, though they employ the same terms that we find in the sacred writings, yet they use them in a quite different sense from that which treating this cen tury. they |