the disciple’s excellent understanding; and he even obtained influence enough over the master to make him retract some of that invective against philosophy which at first threatened to bear down all human reason. Melanchthon became a strenuous advocate of Aristotle, in opposition to all other ancient philosophy. He introduced into the University of Wittenberg, to which all Protestant Germany looked up, a scheme of dialectics and physics, founded upon the Peripatetic school, but improved by his own acuteness and knowledge. Thus in his books the physical science of antiquity is enlarged by all that had been added in astronomy and physiology. It need hardly be said that the authority of Scripture was always resorted to as controlling a philosophy which had been considered unfavourable to natural religion.”[1] This system of Melanchthon’s got the nickname of the “Philippic Method,” and it was received with so much favour in the Protestant Universities of Germany as to cause these Universities to oppose the spread of Ramism.”
Scholasticism and the love of authority died hard, and not without many a struggle. It is recorded that so late as the year 1629 an Act of the French Parliament was passed forbidding attacks upon Aristotle! The Jesuits employed the Peripatetic tenets in arguing against free-thinkers like Descartes. Even to the present day the manuals of philosophy in Roman Catholic ecclesiastical establishments are a résumé of Aristotle.
- ↑ Hallam’s ‘Introduction to the Literature of Europe.’ Part I, chap. iii.
