"[22] Here you have
the Catholic hall-mark--the deduction of the truth of a principle from
its supreme goodness or utility. And what is there of greater, of more
sovereign utility, than the immortality of the soul? "As all is
uncertain, either we must believe all men or none," said Lactantius; but
that great mystic and ascetic, Blessed Heinrich Seuse, the Dominican,
implored the Eternal Wisdom for one word affirming that He was love, and
when the answer came, "All creatures proclaim that I am love," Seuse
replied, "Alas! Lord, that does not suffice for a yearning soul." Faith
feels itself secure neither with universal consent, nor with tradition,
nor with authority. It seeks the support of its enemy, reason.
And thus scholastic theology was devised, and with it its
handmaiden--_ancilla theologiae_--scholastic philosophy, and this
handmaiden turned against her mistress. Scholasticism, a magnificent
cathedral, in which all the problems of architectonic mechanism were
resolved for future ages, but a cathedral constructed of unbaked bricks,
gave place little by little to what is called natural theology and is
merely Christianity depotentialized. The attempt was even made, where it
was possible, to base dogmas upon reason, to show at least that if they
were indeed super-rational they were not contra-rational, and they were
reinforced with a philosophical foundation of Aristotelian-Neoplatonic
thirteenth-century philosophy.
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