Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/100

90 Journal of Philology. Filius Dei, dcscendcns ad inferos, omnes quos inferni career de- tinuit inde liberasset, credulos et incredulos, laudatores Dei simul et cultores idolorum: et multa alia horribilia de proedesti- natione Dei contraria fidei catholicae aflirmat." As a general rule, I think, these speculative tendencies are in that age associated with Irish culture. Dunstan, for example, the Archbishop of Canterbury, had imbibed a somewhat novel taste for science and for Christian philosophy as well, from inter- course with Irish monks and the perusal of their treatises : (see Wright's Biograph. Britan. I. 457). But he in whom such tendencies had reached their very highest point was a distin- guished layman, John Scotus Erigena, the friend of Charles-le- Chauve. He is the earliest Keltic scholar who had studied Greek successfully; and I may add, the first who was acquainted with the Greek Fathers. His achievements in this new field of literature astonished his opponents : " Mirandum est quoque," writes the bibliothecarius of the Roman Church, rt quomodo vir ille barbarus, qui in finibus mundi positus, quanto ab hominibus conversatione, tanto credi potuit alterius linguae dictione Ion- gin quus, talia intellectu capere [alluding to the work of the Pseudo-Dionysius], in aliamque linguam transferre valuerit :" Ussher's Vet. Epist. Hiber. Sylloge; Works, iv. 483. On many subjects, it is true, Erigena departed widely from the doctrines of the Church, and, as Neander proves at length (Ch. Hist. vi. 163 sqq), his principles, if logically carried out, would have resulted in gigantic errors, in " an altogether pantheistic system of the world." Yet owing to his Christian training he stopped short of this conclusion. Witness the deep reverence which he always manifested for the Scriptures. In the Preface to his translation of the Pseudo-Dionysius, he addressed his friend the emperor in the following terms: " Toto vestrae mentis intuitu totaque cordis devotione Sanctarum Scripturarum secreta, duct nte Deo et rationis lumine, investigatis investigantesque diligitis. Et non solum Latialis eloquii maximos sanctissimosque autores per- quiritis; verum etiam in augmentum wdificationis catholicw ftdei, novis modernisque editionibus, in laudem Christiani dogmatis, Hellados patres pio affectu addidistis consulere." (Ussher, as above, pp. 476, 477). And at the close of his elaborate treatise, De Divisione Natures, (Oxon. 1681) is a very striking passage which I quote at length because it may be taken as the best