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    and to the cultivation of the human mind , b y the Moorish schools . The scholastic philosophy is almost exclusively derived from thence . I need not observe , that the philosophy of Aristotle was early and ardently

    embraced by the schools of Bagdad and Spain , and gave birth to those subtle metaphysical reasonings , which scandalized many of the more orthodox believers , and produced an infinite variety of sects , who disputed on all

    the intricacies of predestination , liberty , free grace , necessity , &c . The Mahometan doctors had , most conveniently for the peace of their church , an admirable plan of preventing schism , by at once declaring the field of these controversies neutral ground , and thus allowing space for their most

    ardent spirits to expatiate , without coming into collision with the essentials of its faith . Among them we hear of such things as orthodox sects . In this way , too , the union with Jew and Christian believers , in the prosecution of similar inquiries , was greatly facilitated . Points of difference were

    avoided , and we have the singular spectacle , which these ages afforded , of the most hostile sects pursuing the deepest theological speculations in perfect unity , and Christian doctors , openly educated in Mahometan schools , writing on the subjects , and professing

    the opinions , there discussed and inculcated . There is , I believe , now no question that the whole system of the schoolmen is to be found in the speculations of the Mahometan metaphysicians and commentators . Even the

    precise dispute , which so long agitated the European schools , between the contending sects of Nominalist 3 and R ^ ftlists , is stated and discussed by Al Gazel . The original scholasticism of the Arabian schools required little or no accommodation to the specific objects of the Christian . Their doctrines on

    the Divine Being and his attributes , observes Denina , on Grace , Free Will , Human Actions , Virtue and Vice , Predestination , Eternal Punishment and Heaven , even the very titles of the works of the Arabians

    and the schoolmen on these subjects are so similar , that one cannot doubt that the one was copied from the other . Indeed , some of the names which stand foremost in the ranks of

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    the European schoolmen are intimately connected with , many of them educated in , the Spanish schools ; at the head of whom , in order of time and influence we may , perhaps , place Gerbert , afterwards Sylvester II . Even

    so late as the age of Petrarch we find from him , that the learned exalted Averroes above the Christian fathers in no very courteous terms : " Utinam te Averroem pati posses , ut ? ideres quanto ille tuis Ms nugatoribus major

    sit . " The adoption of the scholastic philosophy , by the Dominican and Franciscan brotherhoods , comtemplated its ascendancy throughout the whole circle of European literature ; but still we find the church and many of her

    more wary sons protesting against the latitude assumed by these inquirers , who , on the other hand , not being allowed , ( as the Mahometan philosophers had wisely been , under similar circumstances , ) to treat these subjects

    a 3 neutral ground , sometimes denied the tendency of the latitude claimed , and at other times boldly met the Biblicists , as they were called , and sought to establish a distinction between reason and revelation ,

    contending that tenets , which were philosophically true , might still , with perfect consistency , be theologically false , or contrary to the orthodox faith . In pointing at the coincidence between the theological pursuits of the Arabian and the scholastic systems , and the consequent probability that the one was indebted to the other , I do

    not mean to assert that the same subjects had not agitated the controversialists of the Latin Church before the proper age of the schpolmen . As earl y as the 9 th century , in the days of John Erigena and Hincmar , the

    same subjects were the occasion of eager controversy ( though Anselm , in the llth century , is called the first metaphysician since the days of Augustin ) ; but it is to be observed , that this was the precise aera when the freest intercourse with the Mahometan

    Universities was established . In tracing the history of the scholastic philosophy , it would be difficult to deny that many of its branches were cultivated in the form of comments and reasonings from Boethius and St . Augustin , before the Aristotelian philosophy came into vogue ; but it is

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    6 The Nonconformist . . Noi > XXVI .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1823, page 6, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1780/page/6/