XII. HISTORY OF THE LOSOPHY. Thus we have distinguished the quadriform division of universal CHAP. nature, which is understood in God and in creation. The first and the last form was on the Deity alone; not that his nature, which is pre-eminently single and uncompounded, is divisible, but because it is susceptible of a double mode of contemplation. While SCHOLASI contemplate Him as the beginning and cause of all things, the TIC PHItrue reason occurs to me, which confidently suggests that the divine essence or subsistence, goodness, power, wisdom, and its other attributes, are created by no one, for there is no superior to the divine nature. All things which are, or which now are not, were created from it, and by it, and in it, and to it. While I view him as the end and untransgressible term of all things; whom all desire, and in whom they place the limit of their natural movement, I find him to be neither created nor creating. That nature which is from itself, cannot be created, nor does it create; for as all things which shall proceed from it by an intelligible or sensible generation will, by an ineffable and wonderful regeneration, return to it, and all things will be at rest within it, what shall he create when He himself will be all in all, and will appear in nothing but in Himself? All things are so ordered by Divine Providence, that no evil is found substantially in the nature of things, nor any thing which will disturb the great republic and civil disposition of all. Having thus considered the fourfold view of universal nature→→ two in the divine nature, as to their origin and end; and two in framed nature, as to their causes and effects; we added some theories on the return of effects into their causes, or the relations in which they subsist. There were three modes of this :-The first was generally in the transmutation of all the sensible creation. There is no body but what will return into its occult causes. The second mode will obtain in the general return of all human nature, saved in Christ, into its primitive condition-into a paradise-into the dignity of the Divine Image. The third mode will be experienced by those who will not only ascend into the sublimity of nature, substituted in them, but by the abundance of the Divine grace, which shall be delivered by Christ, and in Him to His elect, will, above all the laws and terms of nature, superessentially pass into God himself, and be one in him and with him. There are three degrees of this ascent :-' -The first is, the transition of the mind into the knowlege of all things which are after God. The second, of that knowlege into wisdom, or the intimate contemplation of truth, as far as it will be permitted to BOOK LITERARY ENGLAND. a creature. The third and last is the supernatural setting of the most purified souls in God himself the most secret mysteries will then be opened to the blessed and the illuminated intellects in an ineffable manner. pp. 311, 312. 7 It has been remarked, that no heresies appeared in the tenth century. It is an observation ominous of evil to mankind. It announces a deathlike torpor of mind, fatal to human progress; for, while many minds think, some will diverge into eccentricities which will benefit the rest of the world, if right, or be ridiculed and exploded, if wrong. In no age was knowlege, religion, or morals, at a lower ebb, than in the tenth. In no age can the mind be impartially exercised without some diversity from existing opinions; but discerning men will always look upon those eccentricities as transitory projectiles, that, if not kept up by the force of controversy, always tend to fall out of sight and notice. The surest way to defeat these ill effects is, to leave them unnoticed; and for wiser men to publish better systems, and by the presentation of more useful truths, to divest error silently of its casual popularity. But Joannes Erigena rather left an example than made an impression. He was wondered at-read by a few—but imitated by none. His work was a little island, dimly floating in a darkened hemisphere, and was generally neglected. It was the Arabian mind that caught the same spirit from its Aristotelian stu 7 Dupin must have felt this; for in accounting for there being no heresy, after remarking that the sober people contented themselves with implicit faith, he adds and the profligate abandoned themselves to gross sensualities, satisfying their brutal appetites, rather than to the vices of the mind, to which only ingenious persons are liable.' Eccl. Hist. Cent. 10. c. 6. dies, and gradually infused it into those nations CHAP. which had checked or defied the progress of their XII. arms; but whose inquisitive scholars became eager HISTORY to transplant into their own countries the attractive SCHOLASdialectics of the Mohamedan philosophers. 8 OF THE TIC PHI- The studies From the time that the sciences were cultivated by the Arabs in Spain, some of their illuminating rays imported began to penetrate the darkness of Europe. It has from Spain. been already shewn, that the Spanish Christians, in the ninth century, studied at the Arab seminaries; and that in the next, French ecclesiastics went thither in search of knowlege, as Gerbert, who became Pope in 1000. In the works of the disciples of his scholar Fulbert, we may trace marks of this intercourse, in some of the illustrations of their reasoning; and it is probable, that the conversation and attainments of the minds acquainted with Arab studies, excited in many others unusual curiosity and the spirit of disquisition. We have mentioned before, that Lanfranc began the study of dialectics at Bec; the taste accompanied him to England; and Anselm, his pupil, and successor in his archiepiscopal see, by his metaphysical investigations extended it to new subjects, and increased its popularity. Anselm was the first writer who made a complete general system of theology, tho what he did was, in a short time, surpassed by the treatise of Hildebert, the archbishop of Tours. See before, p. 372. As Adalman, in his Treatise against Berengarius, a model of benign and truly Christian controversy. Bib. Mag. vol. 3. p. 167-171. It begins very kindly: I have called you my collectaneum, on account of that dulcissimum contubernium, which I had with you when a youth in the academy at Chartreux, under our venerable Socrates (Fulbert.) I conjure you by those private evening conversations which he often had with us in the garden near the chapel, when he besought us with tears to keep on in the right way,' &c.. BOOK VI. HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Roscelin lard. 10 But the person who seems to be best entitled to the name of the immediate father of the scholastic LITERARY philosophy, was Roscelin of Bretagne.-A prelate, almost his contemporary, says, "Bretagne is full of clerks, who have acute minds, and apply them to the and Abe- arts; but as to other concerns, it is fertile only of blockheads." One of these clerks was Roscelin, who, the same author. says, "first in our times established the sententiam vocum. He was the earliest preceptor of Abelard, also a Breton. Abelard was born at his father's castle, about eight miles from Nantz. His parent, tho a knight, had imbibed so great a love for letters, that he determined to have his son well instructed in them before he learnt the use of arms, altho his eldest child. Abelard, from the instructions of Roscelin, and from his improvement afterwards in the university of Paris, became so attached to study, that he says of himself, he left the pomp of military glory, with the prerogatives of primogeniture, to his younger brother; and, preferring the dialectical art, he resolved to distinguish himself in it." Thus what little credit may be attached to the origin of the scholastic philosophy, seems to belong to England, to the Anglo-Normans, and to Bretagne. Abelard's life. Abelard rambled over various provinces, disputing wherever he heard that the study of this art flourished. He came at last to Paris, about 1100, where this new topic then chiefly prevailed. William de Champeaux was the famous teacher there.12 Abelard 10 Otto Frisingius de Gest. Fred. c. 47. p. 433. 11 These and the following particulars are taken from Abelard's account of himself, printed at the head of his works. It is an interesting piece of biography; and if Rousseau had read it, might have convinced him that his idea of writing his 'Confessions' was not so original as he thought. 12 It was to him that Hildebert, bishop of Tours, addressed his first XII. OF THE SCHOLAS became his pupil; and interested his master, tho he CHAP. often ventured to argue with him, and sometimes to confuté him. Abelard soon became ambitious of HISTORY being a preceptor himself. This intention roused the jealousy and attacks of De Champeaux. But some TIC PHI great patrons favoring the young aspirant, he obtained leave to open a school, which he soon transferred to Paris; his fame and scholars multiplying as those of his master decreased. LOSOPHY. Illness, brought on by excess of study, compelled him to revisit his native air. His master in the meantime had been made a bishop, and held his schools in a monastery. Abelard went to study rhetoric under him. His progress and controversies, and tuition, again excited his master's displeasure; and Abelard, on his father's turning monk, being recalled by his mother, travelled afterwards to Laon, to hear Anselm, another applauded teacher. He describes him, as he might perhaps have been described himself, to have had a great flow of words, with small sense; luxuriant foliage, with but scanty fruit. But here the restless avarice of fame pursued him. He thought he could lecture on the Scriptures better than Anselm, tho he says he had known nothing of them before. He attempted it, and was preferred. His new master's persecution drove him again to Paris, and he remained quietly there for some years, reading glosses on Ezekiel. He states himself to have got money letter, congratulating him on his conversion from the secular science of the age to true philosophy, or religion. Ep. 1. So that Champeaux started like Abelard, a disputatious layman at first. He was named the Venerable Doctor. 13 This Anselm died 1117; he was the author of a Gloss on the Old and New Testament, which has been praised and printed. There was another Anselm at the same time, an episcopus Lucensis, whose work in defence of Gregory VII. against his Antipope, is in the Bib. Mag, vol. 15. p. 724. |