[Sidenote: State of learning in the Middle Ages.]
The Mediaeval Church was, in reality, a great supporter of learning. Our two great Universities of Oxford and Cambridge were not less flourishing during the Middle Ages than at present; and nearly all of the colleges and halls at both Universities were founded in those days { 118} of supposed darkness. Nor was this care for literature confined to the Church in England; Universities of equal note were to be found abroad at Paris, Pavia, Bologna, Salamanca, and other places, whilst the Schoolmen, or professors, who taught in these seats of learning, and who numbered amongst themselves the most acute thinkers and reasoners of the time, such as St. Anselm, Peter Lombard, Albertus Magnus, and St. Thomas Aquinas, were all attached to some Religious Order. Enough of the results of their labours have come down to our days to show us that it is neither wise nor just to despise the mental work which they accomplished, even though their conclusions may not always be in accordance with our own.
It is not meant by what has been said above to infer that the Mediaeval Church was altogether free from blemishes, or to deny that these blemishes did, as time went on, increase to an extent which rendered reformation not only expedient but necessary. [Sidenote: The effects of Roman influence.] We have already seen that the supremacy claimed by the Popes over the whole Church was productive of great, though, by God's good Providence, not unmitigated, evil in a political point of view; and much of the error in faith or practice on the part of Christians of those days, seems traceable to the tendency on the part of Rome to crystallize opinions into dogmas, and then to impose those dogmas on the Church. Thus the "Romish doctrine concerning purgatory," and the mechanism of "pardons," or indulgences, grew out of the floating belief held by such holy men as St. Augustine, that the souls of the faithful would undergo some more perfect purification after death than is attainable in this world; while the elaborate system of invocations of, and devotions to, the Blessed { 119} Virgin Mary and the saints, were built up out of a not only harmless but justifiable faith in the intercessions of the Saints for the Church on earth, and the wish to obtain a share in their prayers. So again, the denial of the cup to the laity, which was justly felt by many to be such a grievous privation, was the natural consequence of the over-refinements of the Roman Church respecting the doctrine of the Holy Eucharist[5].