Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/124

 112 HISTORY OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE should be brought back more and more to a basis of Biblical knowledge. He was also agreed with them in thinking that only those whose lives were pure could rightly apprehend the Scriptures as interpreted by the Church under the guidance of the Holy Ghost. ' For the study of the Bible,' he writes to a former fellow-student, ' love and discipline, solitude and calm, are indispensable, for the wisdom of God dwells only with the virtuous man, enters into the soul of the circumspect, informs the charitable heart, delights only in the pure and lowly-minded. If the Holy Scriptures are not always sufficiently enlightening on all matters of faith, the authority of the Church is thus enhanced, and the opportunity given for salutary obedience, which else would not be needed. The Church and the Bible are the complements of each other. The Church confirms the Scriptures, and is itself confirmed by the Scriptures. The same spirit which inspired the Scriptures also established the Church ; hence St. Augustine says : " I should not believe the Gospel did not the authority of the Church compel me." The Church alone has authority to interpret the Scriptures in doubtful matters concerning the Faith, and whoever dares to question that inter- pretation denies the Gospel of Jesus Christ.' The promoters of the new intellectual movement and the enlightened methods of science endeavoured to get rid of the dead formalism in which theology had stagnated for a hundred years and more, and to bring their labours into connection with those of their great predecessors in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. After the pioneer work of Nicolaus of Cusa, and the Carthusian Dionysius,the school of scholastic philosophy,