Grammarians and schools.
Grammarians were singled out of the regiment of fools as the most servile votaries of folly. They were described as ‘A race of men the most miserable, who grow old in penury and filth in their schools—schools, did I say? prisons! dungeons! I should have said—among their boys, deafened with din, poisoned by a fœtid atmosphere, but, thanks to their folly, perfectly self-satisfied, so long as they can bawl and shout to their terrified boys, and box, and beat, and flog them, and so indulge in all kinds of ways their cruel disposition.’[344]
The scholastic system.
After criticising with less severity poets and authors, rhetoricians and lawyers, Folly proceeded to re-echo the censure of Colet upon the dogmatic system of the Schoolmen.
Scholastic science.
She ridiculed the logical subtlety which spent itself on splitting hairs and disputing about nothing, and to which the modern followers of the Schoolmen were so painfully addicted. She ridiculed, too, the prevalent dogmatic philosophy and science, which having been embraced by the Schoolmen, and sanctioned by ecclesiastical authority, had become a part of the scholastic system. ‘With what ease do they dream and prate of the creation of innumerable worlds, measuring sun, moon, stars, and earth as though by a thumb and thread; rendering a reason for thunder, wind, eclipses, and other inexplicable things; never hesitating in the least, just as though they had been admitted into the secrets of creation, or as though they had come down to us from the council of the Gods—with whom, and whose conjectures, Nature is mightily amused!’[345]
Scholastic theology.
Foolish questions.
From dogmatic science Folly turned at once to dogmatic theology, and proceeded to comment in her severest fashion on a class whom, she observes, it might have been safest to pass over in silence—divines.[346] ‘Their pride and irritability are such (she said) that they will come down upon me with their six hundred conclusions, and compel me to recant; and, if I refuse, declare me a heretic forthwith.... They explain to their own satisfaction the most hidden mysteries: how the universe was constructed and arranged—through what channels the stain of original sin descends to posterity—how the miraculous birth of Christ was effected—how in the Eucharistic wafer the accidents can exist without a substance, and so forth. And they think themselves equal to the solution of such questions as these:—Whether ... God could have taken upon himself the nature of a woman, a devil, an ass, a gourd, or a stone? And how in that case a gourd could have preached, worked miracles, and been nailed to the cross? What Peter would have consecrated if he had consecrated the Eucharist at the moment that the body of Christ was hanging on the Cross? Whether at that moment Christ could have been called a man? Whether we shall eat and drink after the resurrection?’[347] In a later edition[348] Folly is made to say further:—‘These Schoolmen possess such learning and subtlety that I fancy even the Apostles themselves would need another Spirit, if they had to engage with this new race of divines about questions of this kind. Paul was able “to keep the faith,” but when he said, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for,” he defined it very loosely. He was full of charity, but he treated of it and defined it very illogically in the thirteenth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians.... The Apostles knew the mother of Jesus, but which of them demonstrated so philosophically as our divines do in what way she was preserved from the taint of original sin? Peter received the keys, and received them from Him who would not have committed them to one unworthy to receive them, but I know not whether he understood (certainly he never touched upon the subtlety!) in what way the key of knowledge can be held by a man who has no knowledge. They often baptized people, but they never taught what is the formal, what the material, what the efficient, and what the ultimate cause of baptism; they say nothing of its delible and indelible character. They worshipped indeed, but in spirit, following no other authority than the gospel saying, “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” But it hardly seems to have been revealed to them, that in one and the same act of worship the picture of Christ drawn with charcoal on a wall was to be adored, as well as Christ himself.... Again, the Apostles spoke of “grace,” but they never distinguished between “gratiam gratis datam,” and “gratiam gratificantem.” They preached charity, but did not distinguish between charity “infused” and “acquired,” nor did they explain whether it was an accident or a substance, created or uncreated. They abhorred “sin,” but I am a fool if they could define scientifically what we call sin, unless indeed they were inspired by the spirit of the Scotists!’[349]
There are some who hate the scholastic method.
After pursuing the subject further, Folly suggests that an army of them should be sent against the Turks, not in the hope that the Turks might be converted by them so much as that Christendom would be relieved by their absence, and then she is made quietly to say:[350]—‘You may think all this is said in joke, but seriously, there are some, even amongst divines themselves, versed in better learning, who are disgusted at these (as they think) frivolous subtleties of divines. There are some who execrate, as a kind of sacrilege, and consider as the greatest impiety, these attempts to dispute with unhallowed lips and profane arguments about things so holy that they should rather be adored than explained, to define them with so much presumption, and to pollute the majesty of Divine theology with cold, yea and sordid, words and thoughts. But, in spite of these, with the greatest self-complacency divines go on spending night and day over their foolish studies, so that they never have any leisure left for the perusal of the gospels, or the epistles of St. Paul.’[351]