Page:Illustrations of the history of medieval thought and learning.djvu/167

Rh specially felt the need of a supplement to the Bible; and although his acquaintance with the former was, he confesses, for the most part limited to the extracts he found in the fathers, he was not afraid to draw forth the great truth that there is a divine element in all noble thoughts, and that society has never been left destitute of divine enlightenment. He held that Plato received a revelation. He accorded to him the peculiar attribute of inspired workmanship, speech by means of mysteries, needing interpretation by means of allegories: for this manner of speaking is most habitual with the philosophers, even as with the prophets, namely that when they approach the secrets of philosophy, they express nothing in common words, but by comparisons or similitudes entice their readers the more cunningly. But for this gift Plato the chief of philosophers we should reckon the chief of fools. The principle was an old one, and Abailard was prepared to justify it on grounds of history and theology. To him revelation was a far-reaching influence, not to be confined to the sacred records of any one nation. The Bible was the revelation of the Jews; philosophy of the Greeks: the two ran on parallel lines until they were embraced, and absorbed, and united in Christianity. Even the cardinal doctrine of the being of God divine inspiration was pleased to unfold both to the Jews by the prophets and to the gentiles by the philosophers, in order that by it, the very perfection of the supreme good, each people might be invited to the worship of one God.

Abailard's view is more or less that of the Alexandrine