Note 252 — Chapter IX · CHRISTENDOM IN THE MIDDLE AGES

It is sometimes described as a formidable product of doubt; and again by M. de Rémusat as “consecrated to controversy rather than to skepticism.” Cp. Pearson, Hist. of England in the Early and Middle Ages, 1867, i. 609. The view in the text seems the just mean. Cp. Lea, Hist. of the Inquisition, i. 57. In itself the book is for a modern reader a mere collection of the edifying contradictions of theologians; but such a collection must in any age have been a perplexity to faith; and it is not surprising that it remained unpublished until edited by Cousin (see the Ouvrages inédits, intr. pp. clxxxv–ix). That writer justly sums up that such antinomies “condamnent l’esprit à un doute salutaire.” The Rev. A. S. Farrar pronounces that “the critical independence of Nominalism, in a mind like that of Abailard, represents the destructive action of freethought, partly as early Protestantism, partly as skepticism” (Crit. Hist. of Freethought, p. 12). ↑