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 (d. 1648) was the unhappy result of the misuse of splendid intellectual powers and immense erudition. The Jesuit Petavius and the Oratorian Thomassin attempted in their epoch-making works to treat the whole of dogmatic theology from a patristic and historical point of view, but both accomplished only a portion of their design.

Dionysius Petavius (Petau, d. 1647) finished no more than the treatises De Deo Uno et Trino, De Creatione and De Incarnatione, to which are subjoined a series of opuscula on Grace, the Sacraments, and the Church. Louis Thomassin (d. 1695) has left only De Deo Uno and De Incarnatione, and short treatises, De Prolegomenis Theologiæ, De Trinitate, and De Conciliis. Petavius is on the whole the more positive, temperate, and correct in thought and expression; whereas Thomassin is richer in ideas, but at the same time fanciful and exaggerated in doctrine and style. The two supplement each other both in matter and form, but both are wanting in that precision and clearness which we find in the best of the scholastic theologians.

III. The Period of Decay may be considered as a sort of echo and continuation of the foregoing, but was also a time of gradual decomposition. The Jansenists and Cartesians now played a part similar to that of the pseudo-mystic Fraticelli and the Nominalists at the end of the thirteenth century. Whilst the study of history and the Fathers was continued and even extended, systematic and speculative Theology became neglected. The change manifested itself in the substitution of quartos for folios, and afterwards of octavos and duodecimos for quartos. The best dogmatic works of the period strove to combine in compact form the speculative and controversial elements, and were therefore commonly entitled, Theologia Dogmatica Scholastica et Polemica and often too et Moralis. Many of these works, by their compactness and clearness, produce a pleasing impression on the mind, and are of great practical value, but unfortunately they are often too mechanical in construction. The Germans especially took to writing handbooks on every department of Theology. In the former period Positive Theology was cultivated chiefly in France,