account of the vagueness of the fundamental idea; he prayed for a dogmatic definition of inspiration.
Moral theology has been detached from dogmatic, in the specialisation of studies, and forms a distinct science of a purely practical nature. It opens with a few general treatises on moral responsibility, conscience, law, and sin, which constitute what is called fundamental theology. The special treatises which follow discuss the obligations of the moral agent in every conceivable relation and circumstance. Each treatise usually takes a particular virtue as its object, and enumerates every possible transgression of the same, arguing out their comparative gravity and frequently giving practical rules to the confessor in dealing with them. Thus there is a treatise on religion, which, after explaining the general obligations of the virtue, enters into a detailed discussion of its possible transgressions—sacrilege, blasphemy, &c.—giving numerous divisions and illustrations, and carefully drawing up a scale of their relative gravity. There is a treatise on impurity which gives the student the physiological elements of the subject and enumerates (with the crudest details) the interminable catalogue of its forms, the professor usually supplementing the treatise from his own experience in the confessional. There are, also, treatises on charity, on justice (a voluminous treatise which descends into the minutest details of conjugal, social, and commercial life), on veracity, and all other virtues.
