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    sophy , which appears to have been peculiarly cultivated in England- The schoolmen became divided insensibly into two classes : those who allowed themselves to discourse without limits * and those who defended

    the existing hierarchy and all its theological system . Of these last , it will be just to say , that they , and especially Aquinas , Bonaventura , and Duns Scotus , stood usefully at that time , in the gap between philosophy and theology , and kept them from bitter and irreconcileable variance .

    But for them , it is not improbable that $ ie study of the Arabian metaphysicians , which unfettered , might have diseased the mind by its own extravagancies , and filled the world

    with scepticism , and with that selfishness and sensuality which the Grecian spirit of debate and incredulity had produced , when the Roman empire fell . 26 The philosophical doctrine of

    S 4 I infer this from observing- that more English authors on this subject are commemorated in the biography of literature , than of any other country . Indeed I think I shall not exceed the iruth if I say , that if you take any subject of literature or knowledge , from the time of itie Norman

    conquest , you will find more English writers on it than of any other single country- — and that , reviewing our writers on each collectively , they have done more on every topic they have handled , than those of any other country . I pen this with a belief that I do not exaggerate .

    25 We find from John of Salisbury ^ that the more scriptural teachers were iiot only denied to be philosophers , but were scarcely endured as clergymen . They were called the oxen of Abraham , and Balaam ' s asse £

    •—nee modo philosophos negant , irao nee clericos patiuntur , vix homines sinunt esse y sed boves Abrahae vel asinos Balaamitos duntaxat nominant , imo derident . Melal . p . 746 .

    Among * the erroneous opinions of the day , condemned at Paris in 1270 , we find such as these—that the world was eternal —that there never was a first man—that the soul dies with the body—that free-will is governed by necessity—that the Deny knows nothing" but himself—that human actions are not governed by Divine

    Providence—that the Deity cannot give immortality to a mortal creature—that the First Cause cannot make many worlds—arid has not any knowledge of the future ; together with a great many tenets on the Deity and religion , which certainly went to destroy the belief of his existence , and of Christianity ajso ^ See ih « m printed at the end of Lombard ' s work , ed . Cologne . 1609 .

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    the scholastic age was , that re } bj 0 knowledge was unnecessary , and th ^ the disciplinae philosophise were Jf iicient . Hence Thomas A quinas w forced to begin his elaborate w OrL by proving logically that the ^ 2 doctrina was also essential , and that real science 27

    was a . His exertions among others , served to keep th ' mind in a balance between philosophy and religion , till succeeding thinken could discern the corruption ff 0 [ n the primeval truth , and reform , without destroying , the ecclesiastical svs tern . J

    The ponderous labours of Aquinas are a monument of the powers of the human mind , and of the ductility and fertility of human language . But they make us grateful to Providence for the vast improvement of human society since his exertions and those of his

    fellow-work men . In the comparatively dwarfish volumes of Dr . Palev , Locke , Hartley and Dr . Stewart , we possess more wisdom and psychological knowledge , than the most patient exertion can glean from all the works

    of all these seraphic , subtle , invincible , profound and most enlightened doctors . These panegyricized masters , like all the other men of learning whom we have noticed , excited the curiosity of their contemporaries to extensive

    disquisitions , and contributed to form the intellect of the ages that succeeded them ; and , limited to these beneficial results , we may justly sanction their ancient reputation . There is indeed something very serviceable to the mind in the mode of Thomas Aquinas . He first proposes the question he has to consider $ then , with all

    27 T . Aquinas Summa Theolog . p . 1 These topics form his two first articles . 23 Of this description was our venerable Wicklitfe . It is remarkable , th at F rance has , ii ) the present age of knowledge , furh t phi

    nished uo person who united enoug olosophy and of religion ., to me liorate without destruction . Nothing' Init the e > : treinei of total belief or total disbelief of the Uinstiauity of Home , have yet appeare d there M - extremes that will yet shake the nat « until a Melancthon , an Erasmus , a ther , emerge . The same renr-irk m » y applied to Spain and Italy . It ^ asa g ;^ beauty in the ' English intellect , us a " wards iu the German , that it ilii ' ^ separate the injurious appendage from substantial truth .

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    SOS History of the Scholastic Philosoph y *

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1815, page 208, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1759/page/8/