of patronage and authority to survive in maturer years. Personally I was more than usually indebted to his guidance, and I was the last of our course to remain under his influence. Amongst a host of attainments he had a remarkable grasp of dogmatic theology. He had been professor of philosophy in Belgium for many years, and although he was but superficially acquainted with other schools, especially modern schools, he had a profound knowledge of scholastic philosophy, which is the basis of dogmatic theology, and pervades and unites its entire fabric.
For dogmatic theology takes the student in hand at the precise point to which philosophy has conducted him; it is, in fact, merely revelation set in a philosophical framework. The various points of dogma which are contained (or are supposed to be contained) in Scripture, were first selected by the Fathers and developed, generally by the aid of the Neo-Platonic philosophy, into formidable structures. The schoolmen completed the synthesis with the aid of the peripatetic philosophy, and elaborated the whole into a vast scientific scheme which they called Theology. The purely philosophical problems which arose have been extracted, and form the distinct science of metaphysics; the ethical questions have been separated and formed into moral theology; the speculative science which remains, still wholly philosophical in form and largely so in argument, is dogmatic theology.
