mission. Though afterwards-from the time of Augustine-many considerations had been adduced for modifying the original theorem and changing faith into inward assent and love, nevertheless the old position remained the same, that faith is originally obedience, and that in this it has its initial merit. But if it is obedience, then it is fides implicita, i.e., submission is enough. When the later Nominalism declared with increasing distinctness the sufficiency of fides implicita, or laid it at the foundation of its theological reflections, because many truths of faith, taken in general, or as dealt with by individuals, do not admit of being accepted in any other way, it only gave to an old Catholic thought a thoroughly logical expression;1 for the danger of transforming

1 The juristic Popes from Gregory VII. onwards, especially the Popes of the thirteenth century, anticipated the Nominalist doctrine of fides implicita: "In his commentary on the Decretals (in lib. I., c. I de summa trinitate et fide Catholica) Innocent IV. laid down two momentous rules. First, that it is enough for the laity to believe in a God who recompenses, but with regard to everything else, of dogma or moral doctrine, merely to believe implicitly, that is to think, and to say, I believe what the Church believes. Second, that a cleric must obey even a Pope who issues an unrighteous command (Döllinger, Akad. Vorträge II., p. 419). The latter position does not interest us here; there is interest, however, in the more precise definition of the former given by Innocent, (1) that the lower clergy, who cannot carry on the study of theology, are to be regarded as laymen; only they must believe in transubstantiation; (2) that an error with regard to Christian doctrine (the doctrine of the Trinity even) does not do harm to a layman, if he at the same time believes (believes erroneously) that he holds to the doctrine of the Church. Ritschl (Fides implicita, 1890) has dealt more minutely with this important doctrine. He shows that it originated from a passage of the Lombard (1. III., dist. 25). But the terminology, the range and the validity of the fides implicita remained uncertain among the theologians and Popes till the end of the thirteenth century. The great teachers of the thirteenth century (above all Thomas) confined it within narrow limits, and in this contradicted the Popes (even Innocent III. comes under consideration; see Ritschl, p. 5 f.). Even Duns differs little from Thomas (p. 20 ff.). But Occam reverted to the exposition of Innocent IV. (p. 30 f.); nay, although he is a doctor, he claims fides implicita for himself (with regard to the doctrine of the Eucharist) : quidquid Romana ecclesia credit, hoc solum et non aliud vel explicite vel implicite credo." Occam wishes to get free play for his doctrine of the Eucharist, which diverges from the traditional view; he saves himself therefore by roundly acknowledging the Church doctrine, that he may then make his divergence appear as a theological experiment. Here therefore the fides implicita is turned to account for another purpose. It is remarkable that in its original purpose it was rejected (no doubt on account of Thomas) by Gregory XI. (against Raymund Lullus); but by Biel it is again accepted, and treated apparently with reserve, but in the end there is seen just in it the proof of fides as infusa (as the work of God). Neither Occam nor Biel wishes by this to treat dogma ironically, on the contrary they show their want

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religion into an ecclesiastical regime was at no time absent from Western Catholicism.'

What has already been briefly hinted at above may be distinctly stated here-the problem was the elimination of Augustinianism from the ecclesiastical doctrine. The whole turning from Realism to Nominalism can be represented theologically under this heading. Augustine falls and Aristotle rises-ostensibly not in theology indeed, but only in the field of world-knowledge, yet as a fact in theology as well; for no one can keep

of inner freedom in relation to dogma; but when Laurentius Valla winds up his critical supplementings with the assertion that he believes as mother Church does, the irony is manifest. In what way the fides implicita extended into the period of the Reformation has been shown by Ritschl, p. 40 ff., who also traces out the doctrine among later Catholic teachers. That there is an element of truth in the recognition of the fides implicita is easily seen; but it is not easy to define theologically what is right in it. Where value is attached to the mere act of obedience, or where, for that part, there is also something of merit attributed to it, the limit of what is correct is transgressed.

1 Into the philosophy of Duns Scotus (see Werner, l.c., and the summary in the article by Dorner in Herzog's R.-E., 2 ed.) and of Occam (see Wagemann in the R.-E.) I cannot here enter further. Important theological doctrines of both will fall to be spoken of in the following section. It is well known that Duns Scotus himself was not yet a Nominalist, but prepared the way for applying this theory of knowledge to dogmatics. He already emphasised the independence of the secular sciences (even of metaphysics) as over against theology, while in general he brought out much more clearly the independence of the world (in continual discussions with Thomas), as over against God. To balance this he gives wide scope to the arbitrary will of God as over against the world. Yet that this opinion may not lead to everything being plunged in uncertainty, the knowledge of God derived from revelation (as distinguished from rational knowledge) is strongly accentuated. In Duns we still observe the struggle of the principle of reason with the principle of arbitrariness tempered by revelation and made conceivable; in Occam the latter has triumphed. To the understanding, which Occam brings into court against dogma, the task is assigned of showing that logic and physics cannot be applied to the articles of faith, and to the supernatural objects that answer to them. All doctrines of faith are full of contradictions; but so also it must be, according to Occam; for only in this way do they show themselves to be declarations about a super-sensible world, which to the understanding is a miracle. This theologian has been misunderstood, when his criticism of dogma has been taken as suggesting the irony of the doubter. If, after proving the doctrine of transubstantiation impossible, he finally holds it as more probable than any other doctrine, because the Church has fixed it, and because the omnipotence of God appears in it most unlimitedly, i.e., because it is the most irrational doctrine that can be thought of, in this he is severely in earnest, however much he might like to maintain his own dialectic doctrine on this point. And what holds good of the doctrine of the Supper holds good also of all other cardinal

metaphysics and theology entirely asunder, and the theological doctrines of the Nominalists prove that, while they have reverently called a halt before the old dogmas, after having shown them irrational, on the other hand they have revised in a new-fashioned way the circle of the new, and really living, doctrines (Sacraments, appropriation of salvation). This work directed itself against Augustine, in its directing itself against Thomas.

We have frequently pointed out already, that the history of Church doctrine in the West was a much disguised history of struggle against Augustine. His spirit and his piety undoubtedly rose far above the average of ecclesiasticism, and the new discoveries which he made were in many ways inconvenient to the Church as an ecclesiastical institution, and did not harmonise with its tendencies. No doubt the Church had accepted Augustinianism, but with the secret reservation that it was to be moulded by its own mode of thought. We have seen to what extent there was success in that in the period that ends, and in the period that begins, with Gregory the Great. Gottschalk already experienced what it costs in Catholicism to represent Augustinianism. In the time that followed there was developed in the sacramental and penance systems a practice and mode of thought that was always the more plainly in conflict with Augustinianism; all the more important was the fact that the Dominican Order, and especially Thomas, sought to rejuvenate the theology of Augustine. Duns Scotus and the Nominalist theology directed themselves in the first instance against Augustine's philosophy of religion, against those doctrines of the first and last things, which gravitated so strongly to pantheism. But in controverting these doctrines, and shaking confidence in the doctrine of God as the All-One, they also

doctrines of the Church. Unreasonableness and authority are in a certain sense the stamp of truth. That is also a positivism, but it is the positivism whose sins have fully developed. Here, too, it applies, that one abyss calls up another. The PreNominalist theology had loaded reason with a burden of speculative monstrosities, and at the same time required it to bear the whole weight of religion; the sobered ratio abandoned entirely the thought of a λoyikǹ λarpeía, became always more prepared to recognise the faith of ignorant submission as religion, and fell back on knowledge of the world. On Biel, see Linsenmaun in the Tüb. Quartalschr., 1865.

shook confidence, for themselves and others, in the Augustinian doctrines of grace and sin, which certainly had the closest connection with his doctrine of God. These Nominalists, who (following Duns Scotus) always insisted that reason relates to the realm of the worldly, and that in spiritual things there must simply be a following the traditional authority of revelation, that the understanding, therefore, must be left out of play, really wrought in a most vigorous way, and with the utmost use of the "understanding," within the lines of the Church doctrine. Under certain circumstances "not to speculate" leads also to a metaphysic, or at least does not hinder a traditional speculation from being corrected and transformed in many of its details, and so also in its entire cast. At any rate this principle did not prevent the Nominalist theologians from revising the existing dogma under the protection of authority. But not only did this work now acquire an entirely external, formalistic character, but there were also introduced into everything the principles of an arbitrary morality, of the "conveniens" too, the expedient and the relative. One might say, that the principles of a cosmopolitan diplomacy in matters of religion and morals were applied to objective religion and to subjective religious life. God is not quite so strict, and not quite so holy, as He might be imagined to be; sin is not quite so bad as it appears to be to the very tender conscience; guilt is not immeasurably great; redemption by Christ, taken as a whole, and in its parts, is very serviceable, but not really necessary; faith does not require to be full surrender, and even of love a certain amount is really enough. That is the "Aristotelianism" of the Nominalistic Schoolmen, which Luther declared to be the root of all mischief in the Church; but that is also the "Aristotelianism" which must be most welcome to the hierarchy; for here they hold the key of the position, seeing that they determine how strict God is, how heinous sin is, etc. That at the same time they neither can nor will part entirely with Augustinianism (Thomism) was remarked above. But they determine where it is to come in, and they showed that they watched jealously the extent to which it was applied.

In the Pelagianism and Probabilism of Nominalism there lies

the express apostasy from Augustinianism.1 But just because the apostasy was so manifest, there could not fail to be a certain reaction-though certainly no longer a strong one-in the Church. Not only did the Dominican Order, in their defending the theology of their great teacher, Thomas, persistently defend Augustine also (though not, as a rule, in the most important points), but men also appeared in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries who observed the Pelagian tendency of Nominalism, and strenuously resisted it in the spirit of Augustine.2 Here Bradwardine must first be mentioned (ob. 1349) who placed the entire Augustine, together with the predestination doctrine, in strong opposition to the Pelagian tendency of the period.3 On

1 Also from the ancient Church and from dogma in its original sense as a whole. Whoever transforms all dogmatic and ethic into casuistry, thereby proves that he is no more inwardly, but only outwardly, bound.

2 Werner has the credit of having described the reaction of Augustinianism in the third vol. of his "Scholastik des Späteren Mittelalters." Yet his account is by no means complete. In pp. 1-232 he treats of "the representation of the Scholastic Augustinianism given by the medieval Augustinian-Hermit School," i.e., almost exclusively of the doctrines of Ægidius (ob. 1315), the great defender of Thomas, and of Gregory of Rimini; then, in pp. 234-306, of Bradwardine's doctrine. Stöckl also goes into the Augustinianism of the fifteenth century, but in his own way. Moreover, Werner will not admit a rejuvenated Augustinianism. "The earlier and later attempts to obtain a specific Augustinianism fall under different points of view, according as they signify a reaction against the enfeebling and externalising of the Christian ecclesiastical thought of salvation, or the opposition, supported by the name of Augustine, of a resuscitated one-sided Platonism to Aristotelianism, or, finally, as they arose from a vague fusion of the respect for Augustine in the Church generally, with the authority of the head and leader of a particular school. It was to such a vague fusion that the Mediæval Order-theology of the Augustinian Hermits (?) owed its origin, which came into existence as schola Ægidiana, and, under many changes, continued to exist till last century" (p. 8 f.).

3 See Lechler, Wiclif I. Bd., and the same author's monograph on Bradwardine, 1863. Bradwardine made a further endeavour to create a philosophy adequate to the Christian conception of God, and on that account went back on the Augustinian Anselmic speculation as regards an absolutely necessary and perfect being, from which all that is and can be is to be deduced. But yet he shows himself to be dependent on Duns in this, that he represents God and the world exclusively under the contrast of the necessary and the contingent (see his book de causa dei adv. Pelag., Werner pp. 255 ff. 299), while in other respects also very strong influences of Nominalism are discernible in him. Yet these influences disappear behind the main tendency, which is directed to showing the "immediate unity and coincidence of theological and philosophical thought," and to restoring Augustine's doctrine of grace together with Determinism. ("All willing in God is absolute substance.") Werner will have it