Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/149

Rh special sense, to resort to metaphors and similitudes in order to bring it home to our understanding. It is true that the z illustrations and analogies which Abailard brought forward, to give, as it were, a glimpse of that which transcends thought, were liable to be perverted as though he intended them to be accurate representations of the truth itself : but setting aside this mistake, for which a there is little justification in his books, if we read them as a whole and do not pick out single sentences, (especially there is no doubt that the main thesis may be, and has 381 sq. often been, held by orthodox Christians, who make a dis tinction between the essential nature of God and the forms by which we perceive it : and it has generally been held that, if imperfect, the doctrine is not necessarily heretical. Nor can it be doubted that it was not really Abailard’s conclusions that formed the strength of the indictment against him, but the method by which he reached them.

It is, however, needless to speculate upon the right or wrong of the case, since Abailard was by all accounts condemned unheard; there was no attempt, certainly no serious attempt, made at the trial to understand or confute him. If any step in this direction was taken, his superior knowledge and dialectical skill immediately drove his opponents back upon their material defences, the strong arm of the archbishop of Rheims and of his docile chief, the papal legate : Abailard mercilessly exposed their vaunted championship of orthodoxy as involving commonplaces of heresy long ago exploded by the arguments of the fathers. Accordingly, although he had submitted hjs book to the jurisdiction of the council, with a promise that if there were anything in it that departed from the catholic faith, he would correct it and offer satisfaction, no one ventured to examine it. Bishop Geoffrey of Chartres therefore, the most respected among the prelates of Gaul, seeing that there was no chance of a candid enquiry at Soissons, proposed an adjournment to a more learned tribunal to be assembled at a future