book did not hold the truth’; but rather ‘the codex is false or the

interpreter errs, or thou dost not understand.’ But in the works of the later ones (_posteriorum_, Abaelard’s inclusive designation of the Fathers), which are contained in books without number, if passages are deemed to depart from the truth, the reader is at liberty to approve or disapprove.”

This view was supported by Abaelard’s citations from the Fathers themselves; and yet, so abruptly made, it was not a pleasant statement for the ears of those to whom the writings of the holy Fathers were sacred. Nothing was sacred to the man who wrote this prologue--so it seemed to his pious contemporaries. And who among them could approve of the Prologue’s final utterance upon the method and purpose of the book?

“Wherefore we decided to collect the diverse statements of the holy Fathers, as they might occur to our memory, thus raising an issue from their apparent repugnancy, which might incite the _teneros lectores_ to search out the truth of the matter, and render them the sharper for the investigation. For the first key to wisdom is called interrogation, diligent and unceasing.... By doubting we are led to inquiry; and from inquiry we perceive the truth.”

To use the discordant statements of the Fathers to sharpen the wits of the young! Was not that to uncover their shame? And the character of the work did not salve the Prologue’s sting. Abaelard selected and arranged his extracts from pagan as well as Christian writers, and prepared sardonic titles for the questions under which he ordered his material. Time and again these titles flaunt an opposition which the citations scarcely bear out. For example, title iv.: “Quod sit credendum in Deum solum, et contra”--certainly a flaming point; yet the excerpts display merely the verb _credere_, used in the palpably different senses borne by the word “believe.” There is no real repugnancy among the citations. And again, in title lviii.: “Quod Adam salvatus sit, et contra”--there is no citation _contra_. And the longest chapter in the book (cxvii.) has this bristling title: “De sacramento altaris, quod sit essentialiter ipsa veritas carnis Christi et sanguinis, et contra.”

Because of such prickly traits the _Sic et non_ did not itself come into common use. But the suggestions of its method once made, were of too obvious utility to be abandoned. First, among Abaelard’s own pupils the result appears in _Books of Sentences_, which, in the arrangement of their matter, followed the topical division not of the _Sic et non_, but of Abaelard’s _Theologia_, with its threefold division of Theology into _Fides_, _Caritas_, and _Sacramentum_.[429] But the arrangement of the _Theologia_ was not made use of in the best and most famous of these compositions, Peter Lombard’s _Sententiarum libri quatuor_. This work employed the method (not the arrangement) of the _Sic et non_, and expounded the contents of Faith methodically, “Distinctio” after “Distinctio,” stating the proposition, citing the authorities bearing upon it, and ending with some conciliating or distinguishing statement of the true result. In canon law the same method was applied in Gratian’s _Decretum_, of which the proper name was _Concordia discordantium canonum_.

These _Books of Sentences_ have sometimes been called _Summae_, inasmuch as their scope embraced the entire contents of the Faith. But the term _Summa_ may properly be confined to those larger and still more encyclopaedic compositions in which this scholastic method reached its final development. The chief makers of these, the veritable _Summae theologiae_, were, in order of time, Alexander of Hales, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas. The _Books of Sentences_ were books of sentences. The _Summa_ proceeded by the same method, or rather issued from it, as its consummation and perfect logical form; thus the scholastic method arrived at its highest constructive energy. In the _Sentences_ one excerpted opinion was given and another possibly divergent, and at the end an adjustment was presented. This comparative formlessness attains in the _Summa_ a serried syllogistic structure. Thomas, who finally perfects it, presents his connected and successive topics divided into _quaestiones_, which are subdivided into _articuli_, whose titles give the point to be discussed. He states first, and frequently in his own syllogistic terms, the successive negative arguments; and then the counter-proposition, which usually is a citation from Scripture or from Augustine. Then with clear logic he constructs the true positive conclusion in accordance with the authority which he has last adduced. He then refutes each of the adverse arguments in turn.

Thus the method of the _Sentences_ is rendered dialectically organic; and with the perfecting of the form of _quaestio_ and _articulus_, and the logical linking of successive topics, the whole composition, from a congeries, becomes a structure, organic likewise, a veritable _Summa_, and a _Summa_ of a science which has unity and consistency. This science is _sacra doctrina, theologia_. Moreover, as compared with the _Sentences_, the contents of the _Summa_ are enormously enlarged. For between the time of the Lombard and that of Thomas, there has come the whole of Aristotle, and what is more, the mastery of the whole of Aristotle, which Thomas incorporates in a complete and organic statement of the Christian scheme of salvation.[430]