under the categories of Aristotle, and to arrange in the systematic form of endless subdivisions every possible lesson, which they think can be extorted from it.

They thought They treated theo

with Berengar that "God is a logician." logy geometrically, after the fashion of a proposition of Euclid. Spinning out of their own subjectivity by the aid of objections, solutions, definitions, conclusions, corollaries, propositions, proofs, replies, reasons, refutations, exceptions, and distinctions, they weave, as Bacon said, interminable webs, "marvellous for the tenacity of the thread and workmanship, but for any useful purpose trivial and inane." 4 "In divine things," says Ludovicus Vives, "they divide, singularise, particularise, completely, incompletely, as though they were dealing with an apple."5 Hence follows that coacervatio, as Sixtus Senensis calls it, which is so inexpressibly wearisome. A perfectly empty schematism led to a boundless prolixity. Langenstein in four large folios had only got to the fourth chapter of Genesis, and more real elucidation of the meaning could probably be given in four lines. Hasselbach wrote twenty-four books on the first chapter of Isaiah, and an indefinitely truer conception of its meaning could be furnished in two pages. It took mankind several centuries to arrive at the conviction that "it had not pleased God to

1 As early even as Lanfranc, the dogmatics of the day are set forth in the scholastic manner, with syllogisms and dialectic examination of proofs and counterproofs. "They did not define doctrine," says Baur, "they refined upon it." Versöhnungslehre, p. 147.

Ampère, Hist. Lit. de France, iii. 333.

3 Erasm. Encom. Mor. p. 193 (ed. 1696).

Bacon, De Augm. Scient. i. 16. "This degenerate kind of learning was chiefly prevalent among the Schoolmen, who, having sharp wits, abundant leisure, small variety of reading, and knowing little history, whether of nature or time, spun laborious webs of learning which are extant in their books."

5 Lud. Vives, De Corrupt. Art. I.; ap. Tribbechovius, De Doctor. Schol. p. 24 Some accuse Abelard (Trithemius, Cat. S. E. p. 97), others Peter Lombard (Aventinus Annal. vi. Baur, Dogmengesch. p. 159), some Duns Scotus (Sent. iii. dist. 24, qu. 1. See Brucker, ii. 875), and some Albertus (see Vaughan, Life of St. Thomas, i. 248) of thus "introducing Aristotle into Christianity.'

The phantom of a "multiple sense" led them yet deeper into these quagmires of prolixity. Bede boasts that a single line of Scripture is so fecund that it" will fill many pages with the sweetness of its spiritual meaning."

U

died in 1489, was, indeed, an excellent expounder, and was warmly appreciated by Luther; but in this respect he stands almost alone.1 In the Mammothrectus, a book which Erasmus says made him nearly die with laughing, we reach the lowest depths of imbecility; but it must simply be regarded as an illustration of the profound ignorance of the clergy in the age in which he lived. During the whole of this epoch the Greek Church produced Catenae, but little else.

It does not fall under my subject to trace the history of Scholasticism itself. Its ruin was due partly to its own excesses and divisions, partly to the general awakenment of the human mind. With Duns Scotus († 1308) begins the decay which ended in dissolution. His constant phrase "it cannot be proved that" led to scepticism. His purely negative criticism, and his method of quodlibets-the statement of arguments pro and contra without any mediation-gradually dissolved the union between faith and science which Anselm had endeavoured to establish. Hence Hauréau calls his system "Spinozism before Spinoza." He also, as well as Raymond Lulli († 1315), helped to open men's eyes to the fact that the whole school system dealt far more with words than with things. What Wetstein calls "the tyrannous and exclusive dominance of that methodic, dry, dead, wooden, strawy, artificial theology which was a mixture of philosophy, technicality, and dialectics," was rendered ipso facto impossible, when, as Erasmus tells us, a "theologian" could boast "that it would take more than nine years to understand what Duns Scotus wrote as a mere preface to the Sentences; and that unless a man had all the metaphysical system of Scotus in his head,

The first Psalm refutes the Stoics, Peripatetics, Avicenna, Algazel, &c. In the third we see Christ's sufferings; in the fourth His miracles; in the fifth the Pharisees; in the sixth the Eucharist, &c. See Fabr. Bibl. Lat. iv. 102; Meyer, i. 322 sq. (who quotes some deplorable specimens). The "sensus mere literalis" is to him always "inutilis.'

1 See Ullmann, Reformers before the Reformation. For the views of Anton de Nebrissa I can simply refer to Meyer, i. 332–339.

2.66 Nuper cum in hunc codicem incidissem, minimum abfuit quin risu dissilirem." Erasm. Colloq. 561. The author of the book was Joannes Marchesinus. For a kindly remark about him see Hallam, Lit. of Europe, i. 286n. See too Sixtus Senensis, p. 273.

3 See Hergenrother, i. 953.

William of Occam.

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he could not understand one sentence of his writings." Men began to perceive that years of study of these subtle technicalities only made them masters of a cumbrous and useless terminology, and took them no nearer to the comprehension of the incircumscriptibilitates, as Scotus barbarously called them, which they were supposed to elucidate.1

The system of the Schools received a yet deadlier.blow when WILLIAM OF OCCAM († 1347) became the subtle and clear-minded champion of nominalism. The Platonic doctrine of ideas-the belief in Universalia ante rem-had been the band of union between theology and philosophy. The Church had adopted the rule Invisibilia non decipiunt, and she had maintained that apart from Realism there could be no belief in the Trinity or in Transubstantiation. Thus Realism was favourable to dogma, for it could reason deductively from truths assumed to be certainly known. The earlier Nominalists had been crushed by accusations of heresy. Roscelin had been charged with Tritheism; Abelard with Sabellianism. Occam by arguing that universals were names, words, flatus vocis, which had their exclusive birth in the human reason,2 snapped the link between theology and philosophy. His two axioms, Entia non-sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem and Frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora, cut away the ground under many traditional assumptions.3 Unintentionally perhaps, but surely, Occam weakened the hold of the entire traditional system of Christianity by resting it on the authority of the Church alone, and by the absurdities, contradictions, and frivolities with which he unwisely and irreverently connected the Christian dogmas when regarded by themselves. No less surely did he weaken the pride of sacerdotal tyranny, when he addressed to the Emperor Lewis of Bavaria the famous

1 See Hauréau, 351–353.

2 Universalia post rem. See Hampden, Bampt. Lect. p. 71.

3 "Le caractère propre du nominalisme c'est la simplicité."-Hauréau. The name Doctor Invincibilis was given him by Pope John xxii.

See Landerer, s.v. Scholasticism, in Herzog's Encykl. and Occam und Luther (Theolog. Stud. u. Krit. 1839). These extravagances chiefly occur in Occam's Quodlibeta and Centilogium.

words "Tu me defende gladio, ego te defendam calamo; "1 and when in his Epistola Defensoria he became the earliest defender of the Liberty of the Press.2 The nominalist Gabriel Biel († 1495) was the last of the Schoolmen.

Nominalism rejects the ideas of Plato, yet the reintroduction of Platonic studies in the fifteenth century had their share also in the downfall of Scholasticism. It led the way to a freer and more spiritual Christianity. The study of Plato was not monopolised by the semi-pagan humanists. St. Thomas Aquinas had spoken of Augustine as "doctrinis Platonicorum imbutus.” Lorenzo de Medici went so far as to say, that "without Plato a man could not well be a good citizen or skilled in Christian doctrine.” 5 The Fathers had been Platonists. "Academia Platonis Ecclesiae velut vestibulum," says Baronius. Ficino, the translator of Plato, also lectured on St. Paul. Colet, whose name stands so deservedly high among English theologians, studied Plato as well as Plotinus and Dionysius. The Church had long been under the sway of Aristotle, and had much to learn from Plato's analytic method of searching for truth instead of starting from synthetic maxims. "The most zealous defenders of Christianity," says Van Heusden," "have esteemed the doctrine of Plato a prelude to the truest Christianity." Christian students thought that they found Platonic idealism in the Epistle to the Hebrews.8 The works of Plato had become known to Europe in the Revival of Letters, and it has been said that the Christian Mirandola was as eager in the cause of reconciling Plato with Aristotle, as the anti-Christian Porphyry

1 In 1328.

2 Hauréau, ii. 420. Marsilio of Padua is said to have learnt from Occam the fine conceptions of liberty which appear in his Defensor Pacis.

3 All that was known of Plato by mediaeval scholars was derived from a translation by Chalcidius of part of the Timacus, references in St. Augustine, and the De dogmate Platonis of Apuleius. Ueberweg, i. 367.

4 Summ. i. qu. 84, art. 5.

5 Valorius, Laurentii Medici Vita, p. 18.

6 See Aug. De Civ. Dei, viii. 12; e. Academ. iii. 19, "In multis quae ad philosophiam pertinent Augustinus utitur opinionibus Platonis." Thoin. Aq. Summ. i. qu. 77, art. 5.

7 Characterismi, p. 189.

8 Even in its most Aristotelian epoch the Church was Realist. Thomas Aquin. Summa Ima. qu. xv. 1; xliv. 3.

Views of Inspiration.

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had been twelve centuries before. This was one object of the nine hundred theses with which, at the age of twentyfour, he challenged the Christian world in Rome. Platonism and Nominalism were opposite influences, but each of them acted as a solvent on the hard shell of the Scholastic system.1 Their work was powerfully aided by the development of Commerce, the growth of the Universities, the spread of inductive philosophy, the Revival of Letters, the acquaintance with the great mediaeval Jewish commentators, the increasing study of Hebrew and other languages, and the immorality and ignorance of the monks and clergy which tended to bring their extravagant pretensions into absolute contempt.

The defects of scholastic exegesis were due to many causes. 1. One of these, and the source of all the rest, was a vague, superstitious, unproved, and purely traditional conception of inspiration. It was confused with verbal dictation, and the Bible was turned into an amulet or fetish with which the hierarchy, which arrogantly usurped the name of "the Church," could do as they liked. The result was "to nullify the use of Scripture as a record of the divine dealings with the successive generations of mankind. The voice of God was no longer heard as it spoke at sundry times and in divers manners to holy men of old, but simply as uttering the hallowed symbols of an oracular wisdom. The whole of Scripture was treated as one contemporaneous production of which the several parts might be expounded without reference to the circumstances in which each was delivered." And thus the Bible was degraded to the level of the Koran, and "the piety of the Schoolmen became a superstition, transubstantiating the Word of God into the verbal elements by which it was signified."3 A false and extravagant system of

1 See Mosheim, De turbatâ per recentiores Platonicos Eccl. 1677; Brucker, Miscell. Hist. Philos. 1748; Delacluze, Florence et Ses Vicissitudes, 1837.

On the growth of the universities see Cardinal Hergenrother, K. G. 946– 952. He attributes the fall of Scholasticism to an "hochgetriebene Sucht nach Spitzfindigkeiten, innere Zerwürfnisse, und das Ueberwiegen der humanistischen Studien." See too Ueberweg, Hist. of Philos. ii. 34, 461.

* Hampden, Bampt. Lect. pp. 88-92. The Fathers, the Church canons, and the forged decretals of Isidore were also treated as more or less "inspired."