Nor does Thomas Aquinas, "the angelic doctor," the greatest of the Scholastics, the recognised interpreter of Catholic theology entirely escape the danger of this "blasphemy." As if armed against it, he sets forth with all explicitness the absoluteness of God, and His entire separation from all that is created. No Eastern Anti-Materialist ever guarded the primal Godhead more zealously from any intrusive debasement. But this guarding is no sure protection. If, as Aquinas asks, it is the essence of God "to be," what is the essence of things created? He answers that it is not being. His world of angels and demons, which corresponds to that of the Dionysian writings has no being, it is finite. This must be the line which separates it from the Godhead, and yet he admits it has being, and is on one side infinite. The visible world was created according to the ideas existing eternally in the Divine mind. These ideas, as Plato and all his true disciples had taught, were the types of the world that appears to our senses. They are parts of God's infinite knowledge; they are the essence of Godthey are God. Aquinas' theology was a compromise-an eclectic gathering. His design was to separate God from His creation; but the interests of theology demanded that the separation be in some way abandoned the chasm bridged over; and this Aquinas did, though contrary to his own design. "There have been," he says, "some, as the Manichees, who said that spiritual and incorporeal things are subject to divine power, but visible and corporeal things are subject to the power of a contrary principle. Against these we must say that God is in all things by His power. There have been others again who, though they believed all things subject to divine power, still did not extend divine Providence down to the lower parts, concerning which it is said in Job, 'He walketh upon the hinges of heaven, and considereth not our concerns.' And against them it is necessary to say, that God is in all things by His preThere have been again others, who, though they said all things belonged to the Providence of God, still laid it down that all things are not immediately created by God, but that He immediately created the first, and these created others. And against them it is necessary to say that He is in all things by His essence." On the existence of evil, Aquinas made some. refined distinctions, the simple meaning of which is, that evil has only a negative and not a positive existence. He did not affirm the eternity of creation; but he said it was impossible to refute it, for a beginning of creation was so opposed to reason that it could only be an object of faith.

sence.

DUNS SCOTUS.

Bonaventura, "the seraphic doctor," was the farthest removed from philosophy of all the Schoolmen. For Plato and Aristotle; he substituted the life of S. Francis and apocryphal legends He exchanged dialectics for of the history of Christ. contemplation and meditation on the way of man's return to God. Yet that thought of Plato's, that the being of God is the essence of all created beings, lay at the basis of his aspirations after the Divine. "His raptures," says Dean Milman, "tremble on the borders of Pantheism,"

Nor can Duns Scotus, "the subtle doctor," the great antago nist of Aquinas, be excluded from the category that contains the seraphic and the angelic doctors. The direction, says Ritter, which he gave to philosophy was throughout ecclesiastical. "He is," says Dean Milman, "the most sternly orthodox of theologians. And yet Duns Scotus is so much a Rationalist as to have denied the necessity of revelation, because of the And abundance of knowledge attainable by natural reason. when he comes to discourse of the relation of God to creation, he falls back on the ultra-Platonic argument of Plotinus, that matter is in its essence but another form of spirit. To call matter immaterial may seem a paradox; but with this definition, how easily does the orthodox Duns Scotus shake hands with the heretical David of Dinanto, and agree to call God the "material" principle of all things. God is indeed the single Monad above all creation both in earth and heaven. To this dogma of the church, as a churchman Duns Scotus was pledged, but his philosophy cannot rest here. The primary matter, which is God, must in some way, be throughout all things. This is accomplished by its being divided into three kinds. The universal, which is in all things, the secondary which partakes both of the corruptible and the incorruptible; and the tertiary which is distributed among things subject to change. The schoolmen repudiated the consequences which we draw from their theology. They were the men pre-eminently orthodoxthe true sons of the church-the genuine defenders of the faith; but their history only adds a few more names to the large list of theologians who destroyed what they sought to establish; and established what they sought to destroy. It is satisfying to find the view of Scholastic Theology here advanced, sanctioned by the great names of Dean Milman, and Bishop Hampden. "In this system," says Bishop Hampden, "neither was the Deity identified with the individual acted upon, nor was the individual annihilated in the Deity. The distinctness of the

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divine Agent, and the human recipient, was maintained in accordance with the Scripture revelation of God, as a sole Being; separate in His nature from the works of Providence and grace. Still, the notions of Him as an energy-as a moving powerentered into all the explanations of the divine influence on the soul. So far they were strictly Aristotelic; but with this exception, the Platonic notion of a real participation of Deity in the soul of man pervaded their speculations. Aristotle's idea of human improvement and happiness, was rather that of a mechanical or material approach to the divine Principle-an attainment of the Deity as our being's end and aim. We see a great deal of this in the Scholastic designation of the progress of man in virtue and happiness. Plato's view on the other hand, was that of assimilation or association with the Divinity. This notion more easily fell into the expressions of Scripture, which speak of man as created in the image of God, and which holds out to us an example of Divine holiness for our imitation. The Pantheistic notion then, of a participation of Deity, or the actual deification of our nature is the fundamental idea of the co-operation of grace according to the Schoolmen. The Aristotelic idea of motion, of continual progress, of gradual attainment of the complete form of perfection, is the law by which this operation of grace is attempted to be explained. This system, made up of Platonic and Aristotelic views, was regarded as sanctioned by the Apostle, in his application of that text of philosophy, 'In Him we live, and move, and have our being.'

The works referred to in this chapter are M. Rousselot's Etudes sur la Philosophie dans le Moyen Age. Bayle's Dictionary. Maret's Essai sur le Pantheisme. Dean Milman's History of Latin Christianity, and Bishop Hampden's Bampton Lectures.

CHAPTER IX.

THE ITALIAN REVIVAL.

WE E have already seen how Aristotle agreed with Plato in the transcendentalism of his theology, though he reached that transcendentalism by an entirely different method. There were in fact, as M. Rousselot says, two Aristotles in the middle ages, Aristotle the logician, who narrowly escaped being canonized, and without whom as an Italian Cardinal said " the church would have wanted some of the articles of faith." The other was Aristotle the metaphysician, proscribed and persecuted, the author of all heresy.

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The knowledge of Aristotle came to the schoolmen through a Latin translation, and the commentaries of the Arabian Averroes. That these commentaries did not agree with the text is now generally admitted, but what Averroeism is, is a question as wide as what Aristotelianism is. † At one time it is the bulwark of heresy, at another time the refuge of the defenders of the faith. The later schoolmen, particularly Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, know no greater enemy of the church than Averroes. The Medieval painters gave him a place in Inferno with Mahomet and Antichrist. Dante is more tolerant, having placed the philosopher among great men, in a region of peace and melancholy repose. His works had been translated into Latin about the end of the twelfth or the beginning of the thirteenth Century, and had found so many advocates in the University of Paris as to provoke a host of opponents, and to bring down the censure of the church. In a former chapter we classed such heretics as Amalric de Bena, with the Brothers and Sisters

D'Herbelot says, that the Latin version used by the Scholastics was translated from the Arabian version of Averroes. This error is repeated by all writers since.-RENAN.

The printed editions of his works offer only a Latin translation of a Hebrew translation of a Commentary made upon an Arabian translation of a Syrian translation of a Greek text.-RENAN.

of the Free Spirit, as disciples of John Scotus Erigena. Three centuries had intervened, all traces of genealogy were lost, yet the similarity both of words and sentiments made the classification reasonable. There was however at work a powerful and living element, and it would be no idle enquiry to examine how far they might be considered children of Averroes. It is certain that most of the heretics of the middle ages sprang from the Franciscans, almost every great movement for reform, for freedom of speech or thought, had its origin in the bosom of this order. They were the preachers of the "Eternal Gospel," the bold spirits that most rebelled against the Court of Rome, the prophets who, not without a mingling of enthusiasm, proclaimed the approach of a spiritual reign. Now the leaders of the Franciscan school favored the philosophy of Averroes. "Alexander of Hales" says M. Renan, "the founder of the Franciscan school, is the first of the Scholastics who had accepted and propagated the influence of the Arabian philosophy. John of Rochelle his successor, follows the same tradition and adopts for his own almost all the psychology of Avicenna. M. Haureau has justly observed that most of the propositions condemned at Paris by Stephen Templier in 1277, belonged to the Franciscan school, and that they had been borrowed by the boldest of Alexander de Hales' disciples, from the long ill-famed glosses of Avicenna and Averroes. The same year the Dominican, Robert of Kilwardby, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the council held at Oxford, the centre cf the Franciscan school, condemned propositions almost identical, and in which the influence of Averroes could not be ignored. We may then believe that some of the philosophers against whom William of Auvergne, Albert and S. Thomas express themselves with so much severity, belonged to the order of S. Francis."

But the history of Averroeism culminates at the University of Padua. It appears there first as a kind of free belief, embraced chiefly by physicians and men devoted to natural studies. From being in disgrace with the church, it comes into favor. It then provokes opposition both from the side of philosophy and orthodox theology. It mingles its influence with the revival of letters, and then disappears as the morning star before the sun. Plato comes back and Scholasticism vanishes. Aristotle is read in Greek and his Arabian commentator seeks the shade. Cardinal Bembo celebrates in verse the great event. The morning dawns and the shadows flee away.

Nearly all the great men of the Universities both of Padua