specially felt the need of a supplement to the Bible ; and
although his acquaintance with the former was, he con
fesses, e for the most part limited to the extracts he found
in the fathers, he was not afraid to draw forth the great
truth that there is a divine element in all noble thoughts,
and that society has never been left destitute of divine
enlightenment. He held that Plato received a reve-
lation.[1] He accorded to him the peculiar attribute of
inspired workmanship, speech by means of mysteries,
needing interpretation by means of allegories: for this
manner of speaking is most habitual with the philosophers,
even as with the prophets, namely that when they approach
the secrets of philosophy, they express nothing in common
words, but by comparisons or similitudes entice their readers
the more cunningly. h But for this gift Plato the chief of
philosophers we should reckon the chief of fools. The principle was an old one, and Abailard was prepared to justify
it on grounds of history and theology. To him revelation was a far-reaching influence, not to be confined
to the sacred records of any one nation. The Bible
was the revelation of the Jews; philosophy of the Greeks :
the two ran on parallel lines until they were embraced,
and absorbed, and united in Christianity. Even the
cardinal doctrine of the being of God divine inspiration
was pleased to unfold both to the Jews by the prophets and
to the gentiles by the philosophers, in order that by it, the very
perfection of the supreme good, each people might be invited
to the worship of one God.[2]
Abailard’s view is more or less that of the Alexandrine
- ↑ Augustin had gone no further than to explain an agreement with Christian doctrine which he found in Plato, on the supposition that the latter had either borrowed it from the recipients of revelation or else acerrimo ingenio invisi- bilia Dei per ea quae facta sunt, intellecta conspexerit : De civit. Dei xi. 21, Opp. 7. 288 B, ed. Bened., 1685.
- ↑ ’Haec,’ says he, Theologia Christ, iii p. 450, adversus illos dicta sufficiant, qui suae imperitiae solatium quaerentes, cum nos aliqua do philosophicis documentis exempla vel similitudines inducere viderint, quibus planius quod volumus fiat, statim obstrepunt quasi sacrae fidei et divinis rationibus ipsae naturae rerum a deo conditarum inimicae viderentur, quarum videlicet naturarum maximam a deo peritiam ipsi sunt a deo philosophi consecuti. ’
