Scholastic Theology; but it is plain that they are also to be taken in reference to philosophy and its praise.
Scholastic Theology has splendid gifts, which make it very formidable to enemies of the truth; as the same Pontiff tells us. 'It has,' he says, 'an apt coherence of facts and causes, connected with one another; an order and arrangement, like soldiers drawn up in battle array; definitions and distinctions very lucid; unanswerableness of argument and acute disputations. By these the light is divided from the darkness, and truth from falsehood. The lies of heretics, wrapped up in many wiles and fallacies, being stripped of their coverings, are bared and laid open.' But these great and wondrous gifts can only be found in a right use of that philosophy which the masters of Scholasticism, of set purpose and with wise counsel, were everywhere accustomed to use even in their theological disputations.'
Moreover, it is the proper and singular gift of Scholastic theologians to bind together human knowledge and Divine knowledge in the very closest bonds. For this reason, truly the theology in which they excelled could never have gained so much honour and praise from the judgment of men as it did, if they had used a system of philosophy which was maimed, or imperfect, or shallow.
Now far above all other Scholastic Doctors towers Thomas Aquinas, their master and prince. Cajetan says truly of him: 'So great was his veneration for the ancient and sacred Doctors that he may be said to have gained a perfect understanding of them all.' Thomas gathered together their doctrines like the scattered limbs of a body, and moulded them into a whole. He arranged them in so wonderful an order, and increased them with such great additions, that rightly and deservedly he is reckoned a singular safeguard and glory of the Catholic Church. His intellect was docile and subtle; his memory was ready and enacious; his life was most holy; and he loved the truth alone. Greatly enriched as he was with the science of God and the science of man, he is likened to the sun; for he warmed the whole earth with the fire of his holiness, and
