nd Germany, and, spreading thence into every country in
Christendom, has been, in secret and in public, with slow, sure
steps, irresistibly advancing ever since. In the history of
scholasticism there were three distinct epochs. The first period
was characterized by the servile submission and conformity of
philosophy to the theology dictated by the Church. The second
period was marked by the formal alliance and attempted
reconciliation of philosophy and theology. The third period saw an
ever increasing jealousy and separation between the philosophers
and the theologians.12 Many an adventurous thinker pushed his
speculations beyond the limits of the established theology, and
deliberately dissented from the orthodox standards in his
conclusions. Perhaps Abelard, who openly strove to put all the
Church dogmas in forms acceptable to philosophy, and who did not
hesitate to reject in many instances what seemed to him
unreasonable, deserves to be called the father of rationalism. The
works of Des Cartes, Leibnitz, Wolf, Kant's "Religion within the
Bounds of Pure Reason," together with the influence and the
writings of many other eminent philosophers, gradually gave
momentum to the impulse and popularity to the habits of free
thought and criticism even in the realm of theology. The dogmatic
scheme of the dominant Church was firmly seized, many errors
shaken out to the light and exposed, and many long received
opinions questioned and flung into doubt.13 The authenticity of
many of the popular doctrines regarding the future life could not
fail to be denied as soon as it was attempted as was extensively
done about the middle of the eighteenth century to demonstrate
them by mathematical methods, with all the array of axioms,
theorems, lemmas, doubts, and solutions. Flugge has historically
illustrated the employment of this method at considerable
length.14

12 Cousin, Hist. Mod. Phil., lect. ix.

13 Staudlin, Geschichte des Rationalismus. Saintes, Histoire
Critique du Rationalisme en Allemagne, Eng. trans. by Dr. Beard.

14 Geschichte des Glaubens an Unsterblichkeit, u. s. f., th. iii.
abth. ii. ss. 281-289.

The essence of rationalism is the affirmation that neither the
Fathers, nor the Church, nor the Scriptures, nor all of them
together, can rightfully establish any proposition opposed to the
logic of sound philosophy, the principles of reason, and the
evident truth of nature. Around this thesis the battle has been
fough