[32] Abélard explicitly and very emphatically rebukes such pretension in the very books which Bernard is supposed to have read.
[33] The reference is to the anti-pope, a Pierleone. It is a subtle reminder of what Pope Innocent owes to Bernard.
[34] Recalling some of the zoology of the Old Testament.
[35] I abstain from commenting on St. Bernard’s conduct, or making the ethical and psychological analysis of it, which is so imperfectly done by his biographers at this period, because they do not fully state the facts, or not in their natural order. It would be a fascinating task, but one beside the purpose of the present work and not discreet for the present writer. I have let Bernard speak for himself.
[36] He did, however, write an ‘apology’ or defence, but only a few fragments of it survive.
[37] Amongst other humane modifications we may note that he raised the age of admission to the abbey to twenty-one.
[38] One of the most widely-used of these manuals at present is that of the learned Jesuit, Father Hurter. On p. 472 of the first volume one finds the Bernardist notions of faith sternly rejected, and variously attributed to ‘Protestants,’ ‘Pietists,’ and ‘Kantists.’
[39] A typical illustration of the perplexity and inconsistency which resulted from the conflict of Abélard’s critical moral sense with apparently fixed dogmas is seen in his treatment of original sin in the Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. He finds two meanings for the word sin—guilt and punishment; and he strains his conscience to the point of admitting that we may inherit Adam’s sin in the latter sense. Then comes the question of unbaptized children—whom Bernard calmly consigned to Hades—and he has to produce the extraordinary theory that the Divine Will is the standard of morality, and so cannot act unjustly. But his conscience asserts itself, and he goes on to say that their punishment will only be a negative one—the denial of the sight of God—and will only be inflicted on those children who, in the divine prescience, would have been wicked had they lived!
Transcriber’s note