THE FREEDOM OF PHILOSOPHY: POMPONAZZO.--The freedom and even the
audacity of philosophy rapidly increased. Learned and convinced
Aristotelians were bent, either from sheer love of truth or from a more
secret purpose, on demonstrating to what extent Aristotle, accurately read,
was opposed to the teaching of the Church. For instance, Pomponazzo
revealed that nothing could be drawn from Aristotle in favour of the
immortality of the soul, in which he himself believed fervently, but in
which Aristotle did not believe, hence it was necessary to choose between
the Church and Aristotle; that without the immortality of the soul there
could be no rewards beyond the grave, which was entirely his own opinion,
but whoever should desire to offer excuses for Aristotle could say it was
precisely the existence of punishments and rewards which deprived virtue of
existence, which did away with virtue, since the good that is done for the
sake of reward or from fear of punishment is no longer good; that, still
according to Aristotle, there could never be miracles; that he, Pomponazzo,
believed in all the miracles recorded in the Scriptures; but that Aristotle
would not have believed in them, and could not have believed in them, a
fact which demanded consideration, not assuredly in order to reject belief
in miracles, but in order not to bestow on Aristotle that confidence which
for so long had been too readily placed in him.

In the same way, he took up again the eternal question of the prescience of
God and of human liberty, and showed that no matter what had been said it
was necessary to choose: either we are free and God is not omnipotent, or
God is omnipotent and we are not free. To regard as true this latter
hypothesis, towards which the philosopher evidently leans, would cause God
to be the author of evil and of sin. It would not be impossible for God to
be the author of evil as an essential condition of good, for if evil were
not to exist then there could not be good; nor would it be impossible that