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    certainly true that the scholastic ays * . teiii ovves £ H irs perfection and scientific establishment to tlie Arabian Schools , and this fact is sufficient for itiV purpose- It must further beadnutted to me . that a principal branch nutted to methat a principal branch

    , of the studies thus brought into vogue , coh&isted of the theological speculations in question , and the popular importance of the latter would certainly be greatly increased by such a connexion , if they did owe their existence

    to it . However absurd many of the speculations of the schoolmen , it is impossible to refuse them their utility in exercising the human mind , in preparing- it for more serious investigations , and , above all , in stimulating it to resistance to the shackles which it

    was the tendency of the Papal government to impose . If the scholastic reasoners had only given rise to the Biblicists , ( who laboured , and in the end effectually , to expose their sophistries , and draw the mind to nobler objects , ) thev would have deserved

    some gratitude at our hand $ . The orthodox Biblicists little thought that , in vindicating the Scriptures as the test of theological and moral truth , they were laying the foundation for heresy much more dangerous to the church ,

    than could have been brought upon it by those who were content to give outward submission to its authority , in exchange for free liberty to pursue their subtle disputations in none 3 sential 3 .

    1 he cultivation of the scholastic taste , however , continued to the aera of the Reformation . Huss was a zealous Realist , Luther a Nominalist . Immediately previous to this epoch , it

    met a powerful corrective in the reviral of Greek learning ; and a beneficial result would doubtless ( independently of the actual Reformation ) have shewn itself in the formation of minds

    who would have extracted the marrow of the ancient € < philosophy , illustrated it by the aids of genuine literature , and the rules of good criticism , and corrected it by the dictates of right reason , and the doctrines and principles of true religion / ' Even if the German Reformation had not broken out ,

    this collision must have etablished , in the bosom 6 f the church , a liberal , enlightened and eclectic spirit , whichjj in many tesbecta , the violence of tlxe

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    Reformers checked- >* # ; are not to lowi f to the Reformers as immediately introducing any great extension o ( freedom of inquiry on those religious subjects , at least , which had not been considered as immediately essential to the interests of the church . The peculiar doctrines which they enforced ,

    may all of them be said to belong to the schoolmen ; and , of course , ( if the origin of that school is correctly placed , ) primarily to the Arabian Universities . Instead of increasing the freedom with which these points were to be canvassed , the immediate effect of the Reformation was to limit the

    boundary , ( at least so far as the church itself was considered , ) and it will be difficult to say , that the peculiar doctrines which it made essential to salvation , and based on scriptural authority , had not a contracting influence on the mind .

    It is true , that some of the Reformers , in the difficulty which they might well feel in warranting * their peculiar dogmas from the Scriptures , professed to found much on the authority of St . Augustin , preferring a Christian father to a Mahometan

    doctor or his scholastic disciples : and if these Reformers had been the first broachers of the opinions they so zealously enforced , as essentials to salvation , and had not merely adopted

    doctrines which had been for many ages the common subject of discussion iu the schools , we might have overlooked the intermediate progress of opinion , and admitted , that the doctrines now

    broached arose from actual investigation , and early Christian authority , however obscurely developed- At present there seems no reason why the Motazalite sectary should not a ^ f least equally share the credit of them with the Christian father .

    The distinction between the tenets held by Luther and hi 3 followers , and the same opinions in the mouths of the Arabians and schoolmen , seems only to be , that the latter had treated them merely as matters of philosophic

    speculation - the former warranted them solely from Scripturer and thereby gave them a deeper , and , if erroneous , a more pernicious influence-In this view , the good effects of the Reformation are to be sought not in its immediate results , not m . the superiority or originality of the dogmas

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    3 T % Nonconformist * £ ( o . XXyi * 7

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1823, page 7, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1780/page/7/