Page:Ninety-nine homilies of S. Thomas Aquinas upon the epistles and gospels for forty-nine Sundays of the Christian year (IA ninetyninehomili00thom).pdf/9

 Sacramental grace, they were " consented together " in support of that nominalism which would reduce the deep mysteries of the Kingdom of Grace to mere names, and would limit our conceptions of them, and endeavours after them, to what it seems now possible to attain. It is not too much to say, that the Sadduceeism which is now sapping all the vitality of our faith and morals, is but the legitimate product of that nominalism which has lain at the root of all religious belief ever since the religious movement of the sixteenth century. Because the Scholastic Theology is realistic in its teaching, it is the only antidote which will be powerful enough to counteract the effects of that pernicious influence which the Teutonic Upas-tree has cast over so large a portion of Christendom. In these skeleton sermons, the realistic teaching is, with one single exception (Epiph. Hom. I., iii.), indirect, giving to them an anti-monastic tone and temper, at the same time not leading to the sacrifice of any portion of their practical bearing. Short and unpretending as they are, they admit of a threefold use.

Firstly, they can be taken as profitable guides in directing private or devotional reading; for they are full of vigorous and condensed thoughts - they bring things new and old together in a striking relationship. We notice a few such thoughts. In the Advent Homilies (I.) the sevenfold benefit of our Blessed Lord's second coming; and the moral aphorism, that "a man is in the judgment by thinking upon the judgment;" that goodness has its precepts, counsels, and promises (Hom. IV.); the threefold cry of Christ (Hom. IX.) In the Lenten Homilies, the fast in Paradise, and our Lord's fasting as joined with His Baptism (Hom. I.); the seven things that our Lord did upon the Mountain (Hom. VIII.); and the threefold nature of the Word of