Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

234 Scholastic Theory CHAP. ix.
Such an exposition had as great and as permanent
success as could have been anticipated. The doctrine of
S. Augustine reigned in the mediaeval Church, and moulded
its authoritative teaching, till the Reformation produced
a reaction and the Eoman ; Church, apprehensive of the
countenance which it gave to some prominent doctrines of
the Reformers, and repelled by the use sometimes unfair
and fanatical made of it, fell back upon a strong doctrine
of freewill. The Thomists took an important part, indeed,
in the Council of Trent, and had sufficient influence to
guard its decrees from any turn unfavourable to themselves.
But they ceased after the Reformation to be a prominent
and ruling school, and gave place to the Jesuits, who, as
the antagonists by position and calling of the Reformation,
formed their theology in express opposition to it, and
abandoned the Augustinian ground. The Jansenists at
tempted a revival of it, to which their enthusiasm and
devotion gave a temporary success, sufficient to alarm the
dominant school : but authority finally suppressed it, and
ejected them, and practically with them the Augustinian
doctrine, from the Roman Church.
The mediaeval Augustinian school presents us with the
names of Peter Lombard, S. Bernard, S. Anselm, Thomas
these Lombard
Aquinas, Bradwardine, 1 and others. 2
Among
and Aquinas occupy the first place as formal and systematic
theologians. The former of these, however, is more of a
compiler and collector of extracts and references, than an
exponent and a constructor. His collection of statements,
indeed, arranged on a plan, and extending over a large
ground, is in itself an exposition, and an able one ; and it
1
I cannot wholly understand, ex- are more like the shadows and
cept as unfavourably characteristic ghosts of of that age, the great mediaeval rereasonings
than the reali-
ties.
putation of Bradwardine, called the 2 The predestinarian controversy
1
profound doctor. A dull monotony in the Gallican Church, which
characterises his speculations, which arose out of the statements of Grotare
all spun out of the idea of the Di- teschalcus, in the ninth century,
vine Power, or of Grod as the Univer- does not offer much valuable matesal
Cause ; but spun into airy subtle- rial to the theological student. I
ties, which want the substance of give the principal points of it in
solid
thought and argument, and NOTE XX.