[1016] Ayala, De Jure et Officiis Bellicis (Antwerp 1597), p. 32.
Asserted by Bellarmin. 44. Bellarmin, the brilliant advocate of whom we have already spoken, amidst the other disputes of the protestant quarrel, did not hesitate to sustain the papal authority in its amplest extension. His treatise “De Summo Pontifice, Capite Totius Militantis Ecclesiæ,” forms a portion, and by no means the least important, of those entitled “The Controversies of Bellarmin,” and first appeared separately in 1586. The pope, he asserts, has no direct temporal authority in the dominions of Christian princes; he cannot interfere with their merely civil affairs, unless they are his feudal vassals, but indirectly, that is, for the sake of some spiritual advantage, all things are submitted to his disposal. He cannot depose these princes, even for a just cause, as their immediate superior, unless they are feudally his vassals; but he can take away and give to others their kingdoms, if the salvation of souls require it.[1017] We shall observe hereafter how artfully this papal scheme was combined with the more captivating tenets of popular sovereignty; each designed for the special case, that of Henry IV., whose legitimate rights, established by the constitution of France, it was expected by this joint effort to overthrow.
[1017] Ranke, ii. 182.
Methods of theological doctrine. 45. Two methods of delivering theological doctrine had prevailed in the Catholic church for many ages. The one, called positive, was dogmatic rather than argumentative, deducing its tenets from immediate authorities of scripture or of the fathers, which it interpreted and explained for its own purpose. It was a received principle, conveniently for this system of interpretation, that most parts of scripture had a plurality of meaning; and that the allegorical, or analogical senses were as much to be sought as the primary and literal. The scholastic theology, on the other hand, which acquired its name, because it was frequently heard in the schools of divinity and employed the weapons of dialectics, was a scheme of inferences drawn, with all the subtlety of reasoning, from the same fundamental principles of authority, the scriptures, the fathers, the councils of the church. It must be evident upon reflection, that where many thousand propositions, or sentences easily convertible into them, had acquired the rank of indisputable truths, it was not difficult, with a little ingenuity in the invention of middle terms, to raise a specious structure of connected syllogisms; and hence the theology of the schools was a series of inferences from the acknowledged standards of orthodoxy, as their physics were from Aristotle, and their metaphysics from a mixture of the two.
Loci Communes. 46. The scholastic method, affecting a complete and scientific form, led to the compilation of theological systems, generally called Loci Communes. These were very common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both in the church of Rome, and, after some time, in the two protestant communions. But Luther, though at first he bestowed immense praise upon the Loci Communes of Melanchthon, grew unfavourable to all systematic theology. His own writings belong to that class we call positive. They deal with the interpretation of scripture, and the expansion of its literal meaning. Luther rejected, except in a very sparing application, the search after allegorical senses. Melanchthon also, and in general the divines of the Augsburg confession, adhered chiefly to the principle of single interpretation.[1018]
[1018] Eichhorn, Gesch. der Cultur.vi. part i. p. 175. Mosheim, cent. 16, sect. 3, part ii.
In the Protestant, The Institutes of Calvin, which belong to the preceding part of the century, though not entitled Loci Communes, may be reckoned a full system of deductive theology. Wolfgang Musculus published a treatise with the usual title. It should be observed that, in the Lutheran church, the ancient method of scholastic theology revived after the middle of this century, especially in the divines of Melanchthon’s party, one of whose characteristics was a greater deference to ecclesiastical usage and opinion, than the more rigid Lutherans would endure to pay. The Loci Theologici of Chemnitz and those of Strigelius were, in their age, of great reputation; the former, by one of the compilers of the Formula Concordiæ, might be read without risk of finding those heterodoxies of Melanchthon, which the latter was supposed to exhibit.[1019]
[1019] Eichhorn, 236. Mosheim.
and Catholic Church. 47. In the church of Rome the scholastic theology retained an undisputed respect; it was for the heretical protestants to dread a method of keen logic, by which their sophistry was cut through. The most remarkable book of this kind, which falls within the sixteenth century, is the Loci Theologici of Melchior Canus, published at Salamanca in 1563, three years after the death of the author, a Dominican, and professor in that university. It is of course the theology of the reign and country of Philip II.; but Canus was a man acquainted with history, philosophy, and ancient literature. Eichhorn, after giving several pages to an abstract of this volume, pronounces it worthy to be still read. It may be seen by his analysis how Canus, after the manner of the schoolmen, incorporated philosophical with theological science. Dupin, whose abstract is rather different in substance, calls this an excellent work, and written with all the elegance we could desire.[1020]
[1020] Eichhorn, p. 216-227. Dupin, cent. 16, book 5.