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philosophy pretended to create great mental superiority , and was at least original and plausible . These claims were sufficient to excite the popular admiration , and to engage the popular pursuit . Even the sloth and luxury of the cloister could not resist the
spirit-stirring study . Monks aspired to attain , and were industrious to spread it : Many admirers of this new sect , " says Salisbury , " have entered the cloisters of the Monks and clergy y but while a portion of these became sensible of their error , and confessed
that what they had learned was mere vanity and vexation , others , hardening themselves in their iusanity , swelling with their inveterate perverseness , preferred to rave in their folly , than to be taught faithfully by those
humble minds to whom God has given grace . If you do not believe me , " he adds , " go into the cloisters ; examine the manners of the brethren ; and you will find there all the arrogance of Moab intensely glowing . "
Our venerable author discloses to us another fact , that these new-directed and ardent minds , feeling their logical philosophy to excite without satisfying their understandings , applied
themselves to the study of physic , to give them the solid knowledge they panted for . Some went to the best schools abroad to study the art of medicine ; and although the moral
sapassage which St . Bernard censures , " to speak ad doctrinam , if what we wish to teach cannot be explained so thai it may be understood ? " Ah . Op . p . 277 . Hence Abelard defined faith to be estimatio ; on which Bernard exclaims , "As if it were lawful to every one to feel and speak in
that what he liked , or that the sacrament of our faith should remain uncertain in vague and various opinions . Faith , therefore , " adds the Saint , << is not estimatio aed certitudo . " p . 283 . Bernard is rig-lit in his principle hut wrong * iii its application . Faith once fixed on truth is
certitude , both in its feeling- and in its object - but it requires the previous exercise of % 'eason , that it may not fasten on chimeras , as the Romish hierarchy , in the thirteenth century , often wished it to do . This previous use of reason , the schoolmen claimed :
and the papal doctors were forced to deny it , because their existence depended on the practice being- discredited . 15 Melalog \ 1 . 1 . c . 4 . pi 742 . 1 ( 3 He says that others of this new school , beholding a defect iii their philosophy , go
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tirist * unable then to discern the ton nexion between their purauits and the improvement of society , attack * this new direction of their curiosit * with fresh satire , we can have no hesitation to class these venturous reasoners , thus seeking to combine
physical science with scholastic acuteness , and striving to raise the human mind to new paths of inquiry , among the most important benefactors to the British intellect in its early vegetation .
From the work of this ingenious churchman , we perceive that he himself had gonexleep into these fashionable studies . I do not know where to point out a neater and more comprehensive summary of the logical and metaphysical works of Aristotle ,
than in the Metalogicus of John of Salisbury * As so profound a student had well qualified himself to judge , he had acquired a right to censure . Having , like Solomon , fu lly enjoyed and exhausted the pleasure of a favourite pursuit , his experience united
with his reason to condemn its inanity , and to satirize its abuse . Weighing it in the balances strictly by itself , his criticism was correctly right . It disclosed no knowledge ; it communicated no wisdom ; its benefits lay hid in its consequences , which had not then been evolved . 19 The very
lo Salernum or Monlpelier , and are made there Clientuli Medicorum . Ib . p . 743 . 17 His sneer is that just as they became philosophers , so in a moment they bunt out physicians . They boast of Hippocrate * and Galen $ they protrude words unheard of before ; they apply their aphorisms to every thing- , and strike the human mind like thunder with their tremendous
phrases . Ib . 18 It forms the main theme of his book , after he has discharged his bile at the innovating * schoolmen . It is another proof of the importance of these men whom he was depreciating-, that he himself attempts rhetoric
in this work to raise the study of with all its tropes , colores and puerilitiet , into the public estimation ag-ain . Hence he praises St . Bernard for his manner of teaching the figuras grammatical , the colores rhetorices , and the cavillationes *<>' phismatum . P . 782 .
19 It is just to the memory of W . Occhain , to say , that he directed his scholastic talents against the usurpations and c * w « l «« of the Roman poatiff . He wrote d « mill dominio reruai ecclesiasticaruin et abated-
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£ 06 History of the Scholastic Philosophy .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1815, page 206, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1759/page/6/
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