ned people, and their empire extended over
the greater part of the known world, they impressed their own genius on
those nations with whom they were allied as friends, or reverenced as
masters. The Arabian genius was fond of abstruse studies; it was highly
metaphysical and mathematical, for the fine arts their religion did not
permit them to cultivate; and the first knowledge which modern Europe
obtained of Euclid and Aristotle was through the medium of Latin
translations of Arabic versions. The Christians in the west received
their first lessons from the Arabians in the east; and Aristotle, with
his Arabic commentaries, was enthroned in the schools of Christendom.

Then burst into birth, from the dark cave of metaphysics, a numerous and
ugly spawn of monstrous sects; unnatural children of the same foul
mother, who never met but for mutual destruction. Religion became what
is called the study of Theology; and they all attempted to reduce the
worship of God into a system! and the creed into a thesis! Every point
relating to religion was debated through an endless chain of infinite
questions, incomprehensible distinctions, with differences mediate and
immediate, the concrete and the abstract, a perpetual civil war carried
on against common sense in all the Aristotelian severity. There existed
a rage for Aristotle; and Melancthon complains that in sacred assemblies
the ethics of Aristotle were read to the people instead of the gospel.
Aristotle was placed a-head of St. Paul; and St. Thomas Aquinas in his
works distinguishes him by the title of "The Philosopher;" inferring,
doubtless, that no other man could possibly be a philosopher who
disagreed with Aristotle. Of the blind rites paid to Aristotle, the
anecdotes of the Nominalists and Realists are noticed in the article
"Literary Controversy" in this work.

Had their subtile questions and perpetual wranglings only been addressed
to the metaphysician in his closet, and had nothing but strokes of the
pen occurred, the scholastic divinity would only have formed an episode
in the calm narrative of literary history; but it has claims to be
registered in political annals, from the numerous persecutions and
tragical events with which they too long perplexed their followers, and
disturbed the repose of Europe. The Thomists, and the Scotists, the
Occamites, and many others, soared into the regions of mysticism.

Peter Lombard had laboriously compiled, after the celebrated Abelard