Spiritual Experiences (Buss) n. 3960

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3960. It was also said to Aristotle that such was at this day the erudition of those, especially the schoolmen, who call themselves Aristotelians, that they could fill an entire page with their writing and express things by mere scholastic terms, such as transubtantiality, predicaments, entities, and the like, [drawn] from their terminology, and when the page thus written is read, it can scarcely be understood either by themselves or others, and yet they will have it that it means something [important], and they deem this learned and most learned, when yet these things are of such a nature that when a man of sense considers their import he rejects [them as mere] scholastic terms, and can in two lines so clearly explain the same thing that anyone, however unlearned, can understand what is meant, while the learned, by their scholastic diction, can scarcely perceive little if any meaning at all. - 1748, November 12.


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