orders did not fully appear till the thirteenth century. Then flourished the five famous schoolmen, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, Dominicans; Bonaventura, Duns Scotus, and William of Ockham, Franciscans. Of these, the most known, at least by name, is Thomas Aquinas. But they all laboured in the field of controversy, and all aimed at the great and apparently difficult task of converting the pure and simple religion of Christ, breathing love and charity, into a hard, logical, and voluminous science, requiring scholastic learning, but dispensing with, or at least passing by, or laying light stress upon, moral virtues.

But if the task was difficult, the way had been carefully prepared by men of acute intellect, immense power, and prodigious influence over their age. Athanasius, Jerome, and Augustine had taught theories of the nature of God and Christ, which the sons and successors of Constantine enforced by the sword.

126

ESSAY IX

THE SCHOOLMEN.

DEAN Milman has compared the works of the Schoolmen to the pyramids of Egypt, constructed with immense labour, prodigious in the extent and variety of their passages and divisions, and totally useless to all succeeding generations. But the learned Bishop Hampden has well remarked,- The existence alone of that system in the very heart of the Christian Church for so many centuries-for more than a thousand years, if we comprise the period of its formation antecedent to its perfect maturity-for more than five centuries if we look only to its perfect development is a most striking fact.' Dr. Hampden goes on to state, that although we meet with some incidental remarks on the theoretic character of the system in works of philosophy or theology, yet with these remarks it is usually dismissed as a method long gone by, which had its day and is now extinct.' But the age of the Schoolmen is an age in which the struggle of Christian scholars to impart to religion the light of advancing knowledge; to borrow from ancient philosophy its highest lessons, and to spread the light so borrowed over the whole religious world, occupied the greatest minds and embraced the labours, the leisure,

the deliberation of an intelligent and active age. The sublime abstractions of Plato at first dazzled the scholars of the time; the dialectical skill and logical precision of Aristotle afterwards entranced and conquered the minds of Albert the Great, of Thomas Aquinas, and of all the leaders of intellectual progress for centuries. Athanasius, Augustine, Jerome, and Ambrose had sought in the Christian Scriptures the knowledge of God and the true sense of the lessons which Christ Himself had given to mankind. The Schoolmen expanded their studies by profound research into Greek philosophy, into the classical works on ethics of Latin authors, and the ingenious and extensive productions of Arabian scholars. Unhappily in this research they converted the simple and sublime theology of Christ and his moral teachings into a metaphysical doctrine fenced with subtle definitions, hedged with dialectical armour, but totally unfit to replace a religion in which God spoke to mankind and taught them with authority what to believe and what to do.

It would be entirely incorrect, however, to say that the Scholastic method is a method long gone by, with which we have nothing to do. On the contrary, upon the arguments of the Schoolmen were founded the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church as contained in the decrees of the Council of Trent, and the articles of the Reformed Church of England as agreed to by Convocation and approved by Queen Elizabeth and by Parliament.

The materials from which the Schoolmen framed

their system of theology were various, and to many minds might have appeared irreconcilable.

There was first the theology of Plato, according to which God was the supreme Creator, and the universe his only begotten son.

Then came the theology of Aristotle, which materialised the universe, and, having converted the ideas of Plato into real material substances, argued upon them with all the force and subtlety of that admirable logic of which he was the prime founder and teacher.

After these, and to be combined with these, were the words of Christ and the doctrines of St. Paul.

Christ had said, 'I am in God.' But He had also said that He was inferior to the Father.

Albertus Magnus, the great Schoolman, said that what was in God was God,' and proved dialectically that God the Son was equal to God the Father.

It is true that the Schoolmen thus laid down a dogma in direct contradiction to the words of Christ. But it will be found that the Schoolmen always preferred the logic of Aristotle to the word of Christ. Indeed, their object was not so much to follow Christ as to build a new edifice of theology with the materials which they borrowed from the Greek philosophers.

The consequence was the Athanasian creed, of which the author is unknown. It has been adopted by the Church of Rome and the Church of England, and has been made the condition of salvation by the ingenious

Schoolmen who preferred logic and metaphysics to the sublime simplicity of the Gospel.

The religion of Christ, as expounded by Himself and taught by his Apostles, was extremely simple. Men were taught to love one another; to forgive injuries to abstain from murder, adultery, theft, and the appropriation of goods deposited with one of their community. The Apostles were to teach this religion in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; of the nature of the invisible Beings who created and ruled the world but little was said. Christ had taught the woman of Samaria that God is a Spirit, and that those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

So likewise, in speaking to the scribe, He did not define the nature or the substance of the Spirit of God He contented Himself with the words conveyed to mankind by Moses--'I am the Lord thy God: thou shalt have none other gods but Me.' Borrowing these words from the law of Moses, Christ taught from the same law the duty of man to love God with all his heart and soul, and to love his neighbour as himself. Christ, and his latest Apostle St. Paul, illustrated and enforced these Divine commands.

In other places and in earlier times a different religion had prevailed. Plato had taught that God had created the world, and he even used the phrase, 'The only begotten son of God;' but, in the idea of Plato, 'the only begotten son of God' was the universe. Aristotle reduced his vague notions to order and logical precision. About the twelfth and thirteenth

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