ago into the exile of Saint Gildas. His return to public work, and that in the immediate neighbourhood of Paris, aroused all the slumbering forces of jealousy, of personal dislike, of orthodox alarm. His former rivals indeed were either dead or had retired from the schools: of such opposition there was no longer any risk. But a new generation had arisen, and was now in full strength, of which the chieftain was Bernard of Clairvaux, a force which maintained permanent, implacable hostility against Abailard. Bernard stood for traditional authority; he held that to discuss the mysteries of religion was to destroy the merit of faith, and Abailard's whole method of analysis and exposition appeared to him fraught with the gravest peril. It was this, rather than any specific statements that might be quoted from Abailard's writings, which aroused Bernard's suspicion and enmity.
Abailard[1] had considered the problem of the relation between human knowledge and revelation, between reason and faith, in three successive theological treatises; in the work de Trinitate condemned at Soissons in 1121, in the revised edition of that work known as the Theologia Christiana, and in the Introductio ad Theologiam. In the first of these he speaks of the impossibility of comprehending or explaining the Godhead; he cites Plato and saint Augustine on his side, and repeats the famous saying of saint Gregory the Great, There is no merit in a faith whereof human reason furnishes the proof–Fides non habet meritum, cui humana ratio praebet experimentum. He supports it by the words of saint Ambrose, We are commanded to believe; we are forbidden to discuss. Nevertheless, adds Abailard, since we cannot by the authority of saints or philosophers refute the urgency of the arguments which are wont to be used by the logicians, to whom in the context he has repeatedly addressed his reproofs, unless, by human reasons we oppose them who rely on human reasons, we
- ↑ [The substance of the two following paragraphs is reprinted, by the kind permission of the editor, from my article in the Church Quarterly Review, 41. 138-140.]
