Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/97

 and predestination and free-will, bound down meanwhile to the orthodox theology of Rome, with no better alternative and outlet than the logic and metaphysics of Aristotle, the comments of Averroes, and the subtleties of the Angelic Doctor. Even these were dangerous guides in the opinion of many. Aquinas held his ground, but Aristotle and Averroes were condemned by the same authority which tabooed the civil law.

Such were the studies of the Schoolmen, both of those who strongly maintained the supremacy of Rome in matters of faith and also of those who denied it. There was not much intellectual breadth in this scholastic arena, but it was quite broad enough to admit the bandying to and fro of charges of heresy. In days when authority demanded absolute conformity, the mere spirit of inquiry and research was sufficient to lay a man open to suspicion and condemnation. The substance of the average scholastic disquisitions was so meagre and trivial that it must have been exceedingly difficult even for an Inquisitor to discover the heretical tendencies of any particular discourse; and possibly for that very reason the accusation was frequently brought.

It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that there was no value in the method by which these subjects were discussed. It was in fact the new dialectic itself which attracted, and to some extent satisfied the frequenters of the schools; and certainly it was an instrument of mental discipline which, in the absence of a better, served to train the