skill.  Those were ages of Faith, and not of Inquiry.  It was all-important to ground believers in a firm faith of the dogmas which were deemed necessary to support the church and the cause of religion.  They were regarded as absolute certainties.  There was no dispute about the premises of the scholastic’s arguments; and hence his dialectics strengthened the mind by the exercise of logical sports, and at the same time confirmed the faith.

The world never saw a more complete system of dogmatic theology than that elaborated by Thomas Aquinas.  When the knowledge of the Greek and Hebrew was rare and imperfect, and it was impossible to throw light by means of learning and science on the texts of Scripture, it was well to follow the interpretation of such a great light as Augustine, and assume his dogmas as certainties, since they could not then be controverted; and thus from them construct a system of belief which would confirm the faith.  But Aquinas, with his Aristotelian method of syllogism and definitions, could not go beyond Augustine.  Augustine was the fountain, and the water that flowed from it in ten thousand channels could not rise above the spring; and as everybody appealed to and believed in Saint Augustine, it was well to construct a system from him to confute the heretical, and which the heretical would respect.  The scholastic philosophy which some ridicule, in spite of its puerilities and sophistries and syllogisms, preserved the theology of the Middle Ages, perhaps of the Fathers.  It was a mighty bulwark of the faith which was then accepted.  No honors could be conferred on its great architects that were deemed extravagant.  The Pope and the clergy saw in Thomas Aquinas the great defender of the Church,—­not of its abuses, but of its doctrines.  And if no new light can be shed on the Scripture text from which assumptions were made; if these assumptions cannot be assailed, if they are certitudes,—­then we can scarcely have better text-books than those furnished to the theologians of the Middle Ages, for no modern dialetician can excel them in severity of logic.  The great object of modern theologians should be to establish the authenticity and meaning of the Scripture texts on which their assumptions rest; and this can be done only by the method which Bacon laid down, which is virtually a collation and collection of facts,—­that is, divine declarations.  Establish the meaning of these without question, and we have principia from which we may deduce creeds and systems, the usefulness of which cannot be exaggerated, especially in an age of agnosticism.  Having fundamental principles which cannot be gainsaid, we may philosophically draw deductions.  Bacon did not make war on deduction, when its fundamental truths are established.  Deduction is as much a necessary part of philosophy as induction:  it is the peculiarity of the Scotch metaphysicians, who have ever deduced truths from those previously established.  Deduction