Page:Summa Theologica (2nd rev. ed.) - Volume 1.djvu/27

 among themselves, they convince them. The great Athanasius and Chrysostom, first of preachers, have left writings about the soul of man, about the Attributes of God, and other questions of the greatest moment. These in the judgment of all are so excellent that it seems as if scarcely anything could be added to their subtlety and exhaustiveness. Not to be too prolix in mentioning them one by one, we add to the number of these most illustrious men of whom we have spoken the great Basil and the two Gregories. From Athens, then the home of the highest culture, they went forth equipped with the panoply of philosophy. Having acquired all their riches of learning by most ardent study, they used them to refute the heretic, and to build up the faithful.

But it is Augustine who seems to have borne away the palm from all. With a towering intellect, and a mind full to overflowing of sacred and profane learning, he fought resolutely against all the errors of his age, with the greatest faith and equal knowledge. What teaching of philosophy did he pass over? Nay, what was there into which he did not search thoroughly? Did he not do this when he was explaining to believers the deepest mysteries of the Faith, and defending them against the furious attacks of the adversaries? or when, after destroying the fictions of Academics and Manichæans, he made safe the foundations of human knowledge and their certainty, searching out also to the furthest point the reason and origin and causes of those evils by which man is oppressed? With what copiousness and with what subtlety did he write about the angels, and the soul, and the human mind; about the will and free-will; about religion and the blessed life; about time and eternity; about the nature of all changeable bodies! Afterwards, among the Easterns, John of Damascus followed in the footsteps of Basil and Gregory Nazianzen; while in the West, Boethius and Anselm, setting forth the doctrines of Augustine, greatly enriched the domain of philosophy.

Then the Doctors of the Middle Ages, whom we call Scholastics, set themselves to do a work of very great