CIAP. HISTORY OF THE clearly both in bad and good; for it will be common to all human nature to rise again in eternal, incorruptible, and spiritual bodies. Think not of the corporeal mass in man; consider rather his native powers; for even in his body, you see that its smallest part is the pupil of his eye, and yet it possesses the largest faculty of scaOLAShis sense. It is in his divine image and similitude that man's true TIC PHIgreatness appears; as that exceeds the excellencies of every essence, so he towers above all in the dignity and grace of creation. P. 172. He closes his fourth book thus :-' We purpose now to treat of the return of all natures into their primordial causes, and into that nature which neither creates nor is created; this is, the Deity. The divine nature is not supposed to be created, because it is the primitive cause of all things; before whom there was no principle from which he could be created. But after the return of the established universe, of visible and invisible things into their primordial causes, which are contained in the divine nature, no ulterior nature will be created from it, or will be multiplied into sensible and intelligible species, for they will become one in his nature, as they are now one in causes; and therefore it is supposed that he will create no more; for what will he create, when his nature alone will be all in all?' p. 223. His fifth book begins with a comment on the divine words,Lest he eat of the tree of life, and live for ever.' To live for ever is to return no more to the want of temporal things, which will perish with the world, but to pass wholly into the Lord, and to become one in him. p. 225. All human nature will be refunded into intellect alone, so that nothing will remain in it but that intellect only by which it may contemplate its Creator. The end of the present life is the beginning of the future, and the death of the flesh is the auspices of the restitution of nature, and its return into its ancient conservation. p. 231. The first reversion of human nature is its solution into its component elementary particles. The second will be completed in its resurrection, when every one will receive his own body from the community of the four elements. The third, when the body will be cleansed into spirit. The fourth, when the spirit and the whole nature of man will revert into its primordial causes, which are always and incommutably in God. The fifth, when that nature will be moved, with its causes, into God; as air is moved into light. For he will be all in all, when nothing will exist but him alone. LOSOPHY. BOOK VI. LITERARY HISTORY OF This mutation of human nature into God is not to be considered as a destruction of its subsistence, but a wonderful and ineffable reversion into its pristine state. For, as all which purely understand is made one with that which is understood, what ENGLAND. Wonder is it if our nature, when in those who are found worthy of it, will contemplate the Deity face to face, as far as it is given to it, on its ascent into the regions of such a vision, so to contemplate him; it should then become one with him and in him. p. 232. If we close this Synopsis with the following apostrophe of Erigena, and his conclusion, we shall have given the reader a sufficient idea of the contents of this Work. After mentioning that the whole text of divine scripture should be consulted, and one part compared with another, because there are some figures and involutions that are intended to excite the exertion of our intellect, he adds, "But the reward of those who shall labor in the sacred scripture, will be a pure and perfect intelligence. O Lord Jesus! I ask no other reward, no other beatitude, no other joy from Thee, but that I may understand purely, without any error of a fallacious theory, Thy words, which have been inspired by Thy Holy Spirit. This is the sum of my happiness, and the end of my perfect contemplation. For the rational and purest soul will find nothing beyond it, because nothing is superior to it; for as we can seek nothing elsewhere more aptly than in Thy words, so we shall find nothing elsewhere so fitting as in them. There Thou dwellest, and Thou introducest thither those who seek and love Thee. There Thou preparest the spiritual food of true knowlege for Thine elect; and there, passing thro them, Thou ministerest unto them. And what is, O Lord! this thy passing thro, but the ascent thro the infinite degrees of the contemplation of Thee. Thou passest onwards into the intellects of those who seek and find Thee. Thou wilt be found in thy theophanies, thy divine appearances, in which, as in some mirrors, Thou wilt meet the minds of those who understand Thee. Thou wilt not be found always in thine essentiality, because that surpasses and exceeds every intellect willing and ascending to comprehend Thee. Therefore Thou ministerest to them thy presence by an ineffable communication of thine appearance, as Thou passest over them, by the incomprehensible loftiness and infinitude of thine essence." p. 306. He thus terminates his work with a kind of summary of its contents. : XII. HISTORY OF THE LOSOPHY. Thus we have distinguished the quadriform division of universal CHAP. nature, which is understood in God and in creation. The first and the last form was on the Deity alone; not that his nature, which is pre-eminently single and uncompounded, is divisible, but because it is susceptible of a double mode of contemplation. While I contemplate Him as the beginning and cause of all things, the TIC PHItrue reason occurs to me, which confidently suggests that the divine essence or subsistence, goodness, power, wisdom, and its other attributes, are created by no one, for there is no superior to the divine nature. All things which are, or which now are not, were created from it, and by it, and in it, and to it. While I view him as the end and untransgressible term of all things; whom all desire, and in whom they place the limit of their natural movement, I find him to be neither created nor creating. That nature which is from itself, cannot be created, nor does it create; for as all things which shall proceed from it by an intelligible or sensible generation will, by an ineffable and wonderful regeneration, return to it, and all things will be at rest within it, what shall he create when He himself will be all in all, and will appear in nothing but in Himself? All things are so ordered by Divine Providence, that no evil is found substantially in the nature of things, nor any thing which will disturb the great republic and civil disposition of all. Having thus considered the fourfold view of universal naturetwo in the divine nature, as to their origin and end; and two in framed nature, as to their causes and effects; we added some theories on the return of effects into their causes, or the relations in which they subsist. There were three modes of this :-The first was generally in the transmutation of all the sensible creation. There is no body but what will return into its occult causes. The second mode will obtain in the general return of all human nature, saved in Christ, into its primitive condition-into a paradise-into the dignity of the Divine Image. The third mode will be experienced by those who will not only ascend into the sublimity of nature, substituted in them, but by the abundance of the Divine grace, which shall be delivered by Christ, and in Him to His elect, will, above all the laws and terms of nature, superessentially pass into God himself, and be one in him. and with him. There are three degrees of this ascent :-The first is, the transition of the mind into the knowlege of all things which are after God. The second, of that knowlege into wisdom, or the intimate contemplation of truth, as far as it will be permitted to BOOK a creature. LITERARY The third and last is the supernatural setting of the most purified souls in God himself—the most secret mysteries will then be opened to the blessed and the illuminated intellects in an ineffable manner. pp. 311, 312. It has been remarked, that no heresies appeared in the tenth century. It is an observation ominous of evil to mankind. It announces a deathlike torpor of mind, fatal to human progress;' for, while many minds think, some will diverge into eccentricities which will benefit the rest of the world, if right, or be ridiculed and exploded, if wrong. In no age was knowlege, religion, or morals, at a lower ebb, than in the tenth. In no age can the mind be impartially exercised without some diversity from existing opinions; but discerning men will always look upon those eccentricities as transitory projectiles, that, if not kept up by the force of controversy, always tend to fall out of sight and notice. The surest way to defeat these ill effects is, to leave them unnoticed; and for wiser men to publish better systems, and by the presentation of more useful truths, to divest error silently of its casual popularity. But Joannes Erigena rather left an example than made an impression. He was wondered at-read by a few but imitated by none. His work was a little island, dimly floating in a darkened hemisphere, and was generally neglected. It was the Arabian mind that caught the same spirit from its Aristotelian stu 7 Dupin must have felt this; for in accounting for there being no heresy, after remarking that the sober people contented themselves with implicit faith, he adds and the profligate abandoned themselves to gross sensualities, satisfying their brutal appetites, rather than to the vices of the mind, to which only ingenious persons are liable: Eccl. Hist. Cent. 10. c. 6. dies, and gradually infused it into those nations CHAP. which had checked or defied the progress of their XII. arms; but whose inquisitive scholars became eager HISTORY to transplant into their own countries the attractive SCHOLASdialectics of the Mohamedan philosophers. 8 OF THE TIC PHI LOSOPHY. The studies From the time that the sciences were cultivated by the Arabs in Spain, some of their illuminating rays imported began to penetrate the darkness of Europe. It has from Spain, been already shewn, that the Spanish Christians, in the ninth century, studied at the Arab seminaries; and that in the next, French ecclesiastics went thither in search of knowlege, as Gerbert, who became Pope in 1000. In the works of the disciples of his scholar Fulbert, we may trace marks of this intercourse, in some of the illustrations of their reasoning; and it is probable, that the conversation and attainments of the minds acquainted with Arab studies, excited in many others unusual curiosity and the spirit of disquisition. We have mentioned before, that Lanfranc began the study of dialectics at Bec; the taste accompanied him to England; and Anselm, his pupil, and successor in his archiepiscopal see, by his metaphysical investigations extended it to new subjects, and increased its popularity. Anselm was the first writer who made a complete general system of theology, tho what he did was, in a short time, surpassed by the treatise of Hildebert, the archbishop of Tours. See before, p. 372. "As Adalman, in his Treatise against Berengarius, a model of benign and truly Christian controversy. Bib. Mag. vol. 3. p. 167-171. It begins very kindly: I have called you my collectaneum, on account of that dulcissimum contubernium, which I had with you when a youth in the academy at Chartreux, under our venerable Socrates (Fulbert.) I conjure you by those private evening conversations which he often had with us in the garden near the chapel, when he besought us with tears to keep on in the right way,' &c. |