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THE BEY. CANOX E. HCCLtJRE, M.A., M.R.I. A., OX 



Thomas Aquinas. 



Thomas Aquinas was born in 1227, and died in 1274. 

 Following his master, Albertus Magnus, he adapted Aristotle to 

 a complete scheme of Christian theology — with the following- 

 result: God makes known His will to men in two ways, by 

 Eeason and Revelation. These are not in antagonism, but support 

 each other. Eevelation consists of Scripture and Tradition ; 

 the latter is gathered from the teaching of the Fathers, the 

 decisions of General Councils, etc. Eeason is not the reason of 

 any one person, but that of which the working is exhibited by 

 the great philosophic minds of the past, Plato, Aristotle, etc. 

 And just as it was necessary, in order to get a rational view 

 of the universe, to trace back the successive contributions to 

 it of the great thinkers of the past, so was it needful to work 

 back to Scripture through the commentaries of its celebrated 

 exponents. Aquinas began with his immediate great prede- 

 cessors, and traced back the chain of teaching through them, 

 and through the Fathers of the Church, to Scripture itself. 

 His connected commentaries of the Fathers on the Gospels, 

 based on this method, came afterwards to be called the 

 Catena Aurca, or " Golden Chain." 



The philosophy of Aristotle, with the Arab commentaries 

 upon it, all in a Latin version, furnished Aquinas with his 

 outlook on the Universe. He himself wrote commentaries on 

 several of the works of Aristotle ; and, thus equipped, he began 

 his great work, the Sum ma Thcologia\ or "Sum of Theology," 

 which he did not live quite to finish. That work is divided into 

 three great sections, treating respectively of God, Man, and the 

 God-Man. He thought, with Aristotle, that the existence of 

 God could be proved by Eeason, but he departed from his 

 master in believing that the world was created and not 

 eternal ; and also as to the soul, which he regarded as created 

 by God when a body was ready for it. 



Like Aristotle, he regarded the world we perceive as given 

 to our intelligence, and looked upon man from the point of 

 view of the end to be accomplished. In dealing with the 

 latter section of his subject, he discusses all the ethical, 

 psychological, and theological questions which naturally arise. 

 But the greater part is taken up with ethics. He distinguishes 

 between the theological virtues — Faith, Hope, and Charity — 

 which are revealed, and the natural virtues, which are founded 

 on Eeason. Faith, it is to be noted, means, with Aquinas, 



