perfections of reason, or from disregard of other established truths,
deductions may be pushed to absurdity even when logical, and may be made
to conflict with the obvious meaning of primal truths from which these
deductions are made, or at least with those intuitions which are hard to
be distinguished from consciousness itself. There may be no flaw in the
argument, but the argument may land one in absurdity and contradiction.
For instance, from the acknowledged sinfulness of human nature--one of
the cardinal declarations of Scripture, and confirmed by universal
experience--and the equally fundamental truth that God is infinite,
Anselm assumed the dogma that the guilt of men as sinners against an
infinite God is infinitely great. From this premise, which few in his
age were disposed to deny, for it was in accordance with Saint
Augustine, it follows that infinite sin, according to eternal justice,
could only be atoned for by an infinite punishment. Hence all men
deserve eternal punishment, and must receive it, unless there be made an
infinite satisfaction or atonement, since not otherwise can divine love
be harmonized with divine justice. Hence it was necessary that the
eternal Son should become man, and make, by his voluntary death on the
cross, the necessary atonement for human sins. Pushed out to the
severest logical consequences, it would follow, that, as an infinite
satisfaction has atoned for sin, _all_ sinners are pardoned. But the
Church shrank from such a conclusion, although logical, and included in
the benefits of the atonement only the _believing_ portion of mankind.
The discrepancy between the logical deductions and consciousness, and I
may add Scripture, lies in assuming that human guilt _is infinitely_
great. It is thus that theology became complicated, even gloomy, and in
some points false, by metaphysical reasonings, which had such a charm
both to the Fathers and the Schoolmen. The attempt to reconcile divine
justice with divine love by metaphysics and abstruse reasoning proved as
futile as the attempt to reconcile free-will with predestination; for
divine justice was made by deduction, without reference to other
attributes, to conflict with those ideas of justice which consciousness
attests,--even as a fettered will, of which all are conscious (that is,
a will fettered by sin), was pushed out by logical deductions into
absolute slavery and impotence.

Anselm did not carry out metaphysical reasonings to s