certainty of immortality. Along with this affirmation,
the Church of Rome (if less decisively) has adopted the limitations of
the Thomist theory by the condemnation of "Ontologism"; certain
mysterious doctrines are beyond reason. This cautious compromise
sanctioned by the Church does not represent the _extremest_ reaction
against nominalism. Even in the nominalistic epoch we have Raymond of
Sabunde's _Natural Theology_ (according to the article in Herzog-Hauck,
not the title of the oldest Paris MS., but found in later MSS. and
almost all the printed editions) or _Liber Creaturarum_ (c. 1435). The
book is not what moderns (schooled unconsciously in post-Reformation
developments of Thomist ideas) expect under the name of natural
theology. It is an attempt once more to demonstrate _all_ scholastic
dogmas out of the book of creation or on principles of natural reason.
At many points it follows Anselm closely, and, of course, very often
"makes light work" of its task.

The Thomist compromise--or even the more sceptical view of "two
truths"--has the merit of giving filling _of a kind_ to the formula
"supernatural revelation"--mysteries inaccessible to reason, beyond
discovery and beyond comprehension. According to earlier
views--repeatedly revived in Protestantism--revelation is just
philosophy over again. Can the choice be fairly stated? If revelation
is thought of as God's personal word, and redemption as his personal
deed, is it reasonable to view them either as open to a sort of
scientific prediction or as capricious and unintelligible? Even in the
middle ages there were not wanting those--the St Victors,
Bonaventura--who sought to vindicate mystical if not moral redemption as
the central thought of Christianity.

V. _Earlier Modern Period._--It will be seen that apologetics by no
means reissued unchanged from the long period of authority. The
compromise of Aquinas, though not unchallenged, holds the field and that
even with Protestants. G.W. Leibnitz devotes an introductory chapter in
his _Theodicee_, 1710 (as against Pierre Bayle), to faith and reason. He
is a good enough Lutheran to quote as a "mystery" the Eucharist no less
than the Trinity, while he insists that truths _above_ are not _against_
reason. Stated thus baldly, has the distinction any meaning? The more
celebrated and central thesis of the book--this finite universe, the
best of all such that are possible--also restates positions of Augustine
and Aquinas