We can have few more apposite illustrations of at once the strength and weakness of what may be called the University principle, of what it can do and what it cannot, of its power to collect students, and its impotence to preserve and edify them, than the history of the celebrated Abelard. His name is closely associated with the commencement of the University of Paris; and in his popularity and in his reverses, in the criticisms of John of Salisbury on his method, and the protest of St. Bernard against his teaching, we read, as in a pattern specimen, what a University professes in its essence, and what it needs for its “integrity.” It is not to be supposed, that I am prepared to show this here, as fully as it might be shown; but it is a subject so pertinent to the general object of these Essays, that it may be useful to devote even a few pages to it.
The oracles of Divine Truth, as time goes on, do but repeat the one message from above which they have ever uttered, since the tongues of fire attested the coming of the Paraclete; still, as time goes on, they utter it with greater force and precision, under diverse forms, with fuller luminousness, and a richer ministration of thought, statement, and argument. They meet the varying wants, and encounter the special resistance of each successive age; and, though prescient of coming errors and their remedy long before, they cautiously reserve their new enunciation of the old Truth, till it is imperatively demanded. And, as it happens in kings’ cabinets, that surmises arise, and rumours spread, of what is said in council, and is in course of preparation, and secrets perhaps get wind, true in substance or in direction, though distorted in detail; so too, before the Church speaks, one or other of her forward children speaks for her, and, while he does anticipate to a certain point what she is about to say or enjoin, he states it incorrectly, makes it error instead of truth, and risks his own faith in the process. Indeed, this is actually one source, or rather concomitant, of heresy, the presence of some misshapen, huge, and grotesque foreshadow of true statements which are to come. Speaking under correction, I would apply this remark to the heresy of Tertullian or of Sabellius, which may be considered a reaction from existing errors, and an attempt, presumptuous, and therefore unsuccessful, to meet them with those divinely-appointed correctives which the Church alone can apply, and which she will actually apply, when the proper moment comes. The Gnostics boasted of their intellectual proficiency before the time of St. Irenæus, St. Athanasius, and St. Augustine; yet, when these doctors made their appearance, I suppose they were examples of that knowledge, true and deep, which the Gnostics professed. Apollinaris anticipated the work of St Cyril and the Ephesine Council, and became a heresiarch in consequence; and, to come down to the present times, we may conceive that writers, who have impatiently fallen away from the Church, because she would not adopt their views, would have found, had they but trusted her, and waited, that she knew how to profit by them, though she never could have need to borrow her enunciations from them; for their writings contained, so to speak, truth in the ore; truth which they themselves had not the gift to disengage from its foreign concomitants, and safely use, which she alone could use, which she would use in her destined hour, and which became their stone of stumbling simply because she did not use it faster. Now, applying this principle to the subject before us, I observe, that, supposing Abelard to be the first master of scholastic philosophy, as many seem to hold, we shall have still no difficulty in condemning the author, while we honour the work. To him is only the glory of spoiling by his own self-will what would have been done well and surely under the teaching and guidance of Infallible Authority.
Nothing is more certain, than that some ideas are consistent with one another, and others inconsistent; and, again, that every truth must be consistent with every other truth;—hence, that all truths of whatever kind form into one large body of Truth, by virtue of the consistency between one truth and another, which is a connecting link running through them all. The science which discovers this connection, is logic; and, as it discovers the connection when the truths are given, so, having one truth given and the connecting principle, it is able to go on to ascertain the other. Though all this is obvious, it was realized and acted on in the middle age with a distinctness unknown before; all subjects of knowledge were viewed as parts of one vast system, each with its own place in it, and from knowing one, another was inferred. Not indeed always rightly inferred, because the art might be less perfect than the science, the instrument than the theory and aim; but I am speaking of the principle of the scholastic method, of which Saints and Doctors were the teachers;—such I conceive it to be, and Abelard was the ill-fated logician who had a principal share in bringing it into operation.