Dogmatic Theology, or sometimes of Scholastic Theology, and his claim to the title is founded on this treatise. We need not here inquire in what sense it can justly claim either of these titles; but it will be interesting to take it up, and see what it is like.

The first noticeable thing about the treatise is the fact that it is not an isolated work, but forms part of what may be called a trilogy. In a preface, whose style recalls the piety and warmth of the Orations on Images, but which is distinguished from them by the writer's consciousness of his monastic profession, he dedicates to Cosmas, his fosterbrother and schoolfellow, who had become a monk with himself, and was now Bishop of Maïuma, a work which we know, from other sources, should be called Η Πήγη Γνώσεως, or the Fountain of Science. He explains that it is in three parts. The first part treats of Dialectics or Logic; the second is a summary of heresies; and the third, a compendium of the doctrines of the Faith.

The Dialectics alone would suffice to place the name of our Saint among the remarkable names of Christian science. It is not much more, certainly, than a rather meagre compendium of Aristotle and Porphyry. But it is the first example of the application of the Aristotelian terminology to the purposes of Catholic theology. Greek philosophy had, indeed, often come in contact with Catholic dogma before the monk of S. Sabas wrote about Essence and Nature in his bare cell in the wilderness. But in the Alexandrian schools, and their offshoots, it was Plato, and not Aristotle, who had been brought face to face with Jesus Christ. The spirit of Plato is not the spirit of science and scientific form, but of tempting vagueness and wide theorizing. It was not possible, therefore, that Plato, with all his magnificence, should ever lend his help to make a science of the Church's faith. Again, the great Fathers of the fourth century, especially S. Athanasius, had written volumes on the Catholic treatment of such particular terms as Nature, Substance, and Person; but they had not consciously used Aristotle, perhaps had not used him at all. The consequence was, when S. John wrote, that there was an existing Catholic terminology, not drawn from any philosopher of Greece, but forged by the labours of many champions of the Faith. It was not copious, but it was there. It was a new thing, therefore, to re-write Aristotle's Logic, and adapt it to the recognized speech of the Church. It was a new thing to introduce the principle that the Aristotelian theory and terminology was so true as to be capable of being used in systematizing revealed truth. It was so new

that we may well excuse the very small advances made in S. John's work towards a complete development of what it was capable of. It was so new that he himself seems half afraid of the power he has called up, and sometimes nominally vilifies what he virtually makes use of. His distinction between ovoía and púois is an example. He blames the distinction of the philosopher, and praises that of the Fathers, which, in reality, come to precisely the same thing. But he avows his plan in words that might serve for a text to the Summa of S. Thomas. "Every artificer," he says, in the first chapter of the Dialectics, "requires certain instruments, with which to do his work; and a queen should have handmaids for her service." The science of Theology was to use the labours of the greatest of Greek philosophers as an instru ment, and the terms of Gentile wisdom were to be the queen of the sciences. We have, indeed, in this unpretending handbook the fountain of a mighty river. And it grows more interesting when we remember its date. By the first half of the eighth century learning was very low in the Greek empire. Theology had ceased to be creative; and in philosophy even commentators on Aristotle had grown few in the land. It was a hundred years since Maximus the Abbot had fought Monothelism, and Sophronius of Jerusalem had seconded him in words not unworthy of the era of Gregory Nazianzen. It was nearly two hundred since John Philoponus had made his name as an Aristotelian commentator, amid the wreck of falling Alexandria. Since then there had been stillness and death. The West had been more active than the East. Venerable Bede (735) had just closed his life of encyclopædic labour. And perhaps the schools of Cassiodorus, in Southern Italy, still kept up their former learned activity. Indeed, it seems not improbable that S. John Damascene was considerably indebted to Western sources for his own culture. Cosmas, his tutor, was a Greek monk from Italy. If he came from Calabria, which is nearly certain, and from the colony founded by Cassiodorus, which is highly probable, then the resemblance between the Dialectic of S. John and the sketch in the treatise On the Liberal Arts, of the Roman statesman and cenobite, may be more than community of origin. If S. John, through his tutor, had inspirations from a Roman source, like Venerable Bede,-if the Aristotelianism and wide culture introduced into the Roman schools by Boethius, and upon which the training of the Calabrian monks was conducted, were led captive across the Great Sea, and rescued in the market-place of Damascus, in the person of Cosmas, then both the encyclopædic promises of the monk's speech and the

similar character of S. John's le arning may be traced at least to one fountain-head. On the whole, if the Dialectic is slight and unpretending, yet it discovers, in its small compass, a boldness of conception and straightforward realization of a novel situation, which makes us look back to it with a kindly love, and willingly give it, in its isolation, a higher place than for its matter, perhaps, it deserves.

The brief treatise Пɛpì Âiptoεwv, which is a sort of dictionary containing a summary account of more than a hundred heresies, may be passed over, as offering little that is interesting, excepting, perhaps, the article on Mahometanism, which is more curious for the fact of its putting Mahomet among the heretics than for what it says about him.

We come now, therefore, to the celebrated book, the "Exdwoic ἀκριβὴς τῆς Ὀρθοδόξου Πίστεως, that is, the “ Accurate Exposition of the Orthodox Faith;" in Latin usually cited as De Fide Orthodoxa. The author's own account of it is as follows:-" Then" (that is, after the history of the heresies) "I will set forth, by God's grace, the truth, the error-killing and lie-destroying truth, that the inspired prophets, the fishermen taught of God, and the sainted pastors and doctors have adorned with their words as with the golden fringes of the Psalmist; for its glory, which is from within, will shine out and enlighten all those who approach with purged eyes and pure hearts. Of mine own, as I have said, there will be nothing; but I will collect together, to the best of my power, the things that have been elaborated by the most discerning doctors, and will set them forth in compendious phrase.' There could not be a more accurate description of the De Fide Orthodoxa. Some idea of its proportions may be formed by saying that it would occupy perhaps a hundred pages of this review. It has been divided, partly, it would appear, by the author, but partly also by modern recension, into one hundred chapters, each containing one or more distinct subjects. The division into four books seems not to have been made by S. John, and there is no such marked division of the matter as would warrant it. The contents are, briefly, God, the Trinity, creation, man and his nature, and the Incarnation; these are treated at some length, more especially the Incarnation, which occupies one-third of the entire work. follow, in single chapters, the Holy Eucharist, the Blessed Virgin, the Saints, Virginity, Antichrist, and several other useful matters. The qualities required for an undertaking like this are, reading, accuracy, clearness, and nervous vigour of diction. The reading alone necessary to make the work what its author intended, a sort of tesselated reproduction of

Then

the words of the Fathers, would be a proof that in the library of the rock-cloisters of S. Sabas there were preserved many precious manuscripts of the great writers of the Church, and many, also, of others that are now unknown, but whom the monks of that day knew and read. It is not improbable that there exist to this day on the same spot manuscripts that must have been there when S. John wrote this work. The monks are shy of showing all their treasures to strangers, for they have been plundered more than once by those who should have known better. But report speaks of manuscripts of the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth centuries still existing there, the work of the monks of the laura. In 1806 and 1834, when some search was made on the spot, among other manuscripts were found no less than 380 works of the Fathers, besides books of Aristotle, Hippocrates, Libanius, and others, and an Uncial Codex of the eighth or ninth century, perhaps written under S. John's own eye. Tischendorf, in 1859, found three Palimpsests, in addition to others already discovered. And besides the Greek treasures there are manuscripts in Arabic and Syriac, in Russian and Wallachian, and some splendid Abyssinian parchments. That S. John's library was here there can be no doubt; and the continual references to authors that garnish the foot of his pages is a proof how well he has used them. Still, although he has performed the humbler office of a collector, there is room for many of his own words. And it is in this work that many will think his eloquence is at its best. When his matter allows him, as in his Homilies, and even in his Orations on Images, he often, it must be confessed, runs into the rhapsodic and exclamatory style which the grammarians call Asiatic eloquence. But here his subject has put a rein upon his fervour; he has condensed the vapour of his enthusiasm into a cold but sparkling flow of science, and the result proves to be a didactic style of a very high order. this can only be proved by specimens, and as few readers are likely to be acquainted with the work itself, a few extracts may be here inserted, translated as literally as tolerable English will allow. And first to give a brief sample of his handling of philosophical topics:

THE FREEDOM OF THE WILL.

A second proof. If man is never the author of his actions, the power that he has of deliberating is to no purpose; for why should he deliberate, if he can never be master of any action of his, all deliberation being directed to action? But to affirm that the finest and highest of man's powers is useless, is absurd. If, therefore, he deliberates, it is in order to an action; for all deliberation is in order to action and on account of action.

Next let us take a theological extract from the most developed part of the work, the account of the Incarnation :

AGAINST THE MONOPHYSITES.

The two natures (in Christ) were united to each other without change or alteration; so that neither did the Divine nature lose its own simplicity, nor was the human nature either converted into the Divine or reduced to annihilation, nor, in fine, was one compound nature formed out of the two. For a compound nature can be consubstantial with neither of the two natures out of which it is compounded, but is a new thing out of two other things. For example: the body, which is composed of the four elements, is not the same substance as fire, nor is it called fire; neither is it called air, water, or earth, not being of the same substance as any one of them. If then, as the heretics say, Christ, after the union, becomes a single compound nature, He undergoes change from the simple to the compound, and so is consubstantial neither with His Father, who is simple, nor with His Mother, who is not compounded of divinity and humanity. He cannot be in Godhead, and he cannot be in manhood; He cannot be called God, He cannot be called man; He can only be called Christ, and "Christ" will not denominate the person, but, according to the heretics, the new nature. . . . . But how can one and the same nature be capable of substantial differences that are mutually repugnant? How can the same nature be at once created and increated, mortal and immortal, finite and infinite?

Our next extract shall be a sample of what we may call moral theory; it is S. John's introduction to the Sacraments of Baptism and the Holy Eucharist :

FALLEN MAN AND THE INCARNATE God.

He had given us His own image and His own Spirit, but we had lost them. He took upon Himself, therefore, our poor and weak nature, that He might purify us and make us once more incorrupt and so render us partakers of His Divinity. But it was meet that not only the first fruits of mankind should become partakers of this summum bonum, but that every man that pleased should be born of a second birth, and should be nourished with a food that was new and fitting for this new life, and so should arrive at perfection. Wherefore, by his own Birth (or Incarnation), and Baptism, and Passion, and Resurrection, He has freed our nature from our first parents' sin, and from death and corruption; and becoming the first fruits of the resurrection, He has constituted Himself the way, the rule, and the example, that we, following His footsteps, may become by adoption what He is by nature, sons and heirs of God and co-heirs with Himself. Therefore He has given us, as I said, a second birth, that as by being born of Adam we became like to Adam, and inherited his curse and corruption, so, being born of Him, we might become like to Him and might inherit His incorruption and blessing and glory. But this second Adam was spiritual, and so it was necessary that the Birth and the Food should be spiritual. Wherefore,