esteem; he found there, because he delighted in finding there, all the
Christian ideas: the one God, the Trinity, the Incarnation, the imputation
of the merits of the saints, original sin; and he found less of a gulf
between ancient philosophy and Christianity than between the Old and the
New Testament (this is because the only Christianity known to Abelard, not
the primitive but that constituted in the fourth century, was profoundly
impregnated with Hellenism). He believed the Holy Ghost to have revealed
Himself to the wise men of antiquity as well as to the Jews and the
Christians, and that virtuous pagans may have been saved. The moral
philosophy of Abelard is very elevated and pure. Our acts proceed from
God; for it is impossible that they should not; but He permits us the
faculty of disobedience "in order that virtue may exist," to which it
tends; for if the tendency to evil did not exist, there would be no
possibility of effort against evil, and if no efforts, then no virtue; God,
who cannot be virtuous since He cannot be tempted by evil, can be virtuous
in man, which is why He leaves him the tendency to evil for him to triumph
over it and be virtuous so that virtue may exist; even if He were Himself
to lead us into temptation, the tendency would still be the same; He would
only lead us into it to give us the opportunity for struggle and victory,
and therefore in order that virtue might exist; the possibility of sin is
the condition of virtue, and in consequence, even in the admission of this
possibility and above all by its admission, God is virtuous.

The bad deed, furthermore, is not the most considerable from the point of
view of guilt; as merit or demerit the intention is worth as much as the
deed and he is criminal who has had the intention to be so (which is
clearly according to the Gospel).

HUGO DE SAINT-VICTOR; RICHARD.--Abelard possessed perhaps the
broadest and greatest mind of the whole of the Middle Ages. After these