§ 113.4. =Casuistry=, or that part of moral theology which seeks to provide a complete guide to the solution of difficult cases of conscience, especially where there is collision of duties, moral or ecclesiastical, makes its first appearance in the penitentials (§ 89, 6), and had a great impetus given it in the compulsory injunction of auricular confession (§ 104, 4). It was also favoured by the hair-splitting character of scholastic dialectics. The first who elaborated it as a distinct science was Raimundus [Raimund] de Pennaforte, who besides his works on canon law (§ 99, 5), wrote about A.D. 1238 a _summa de casibus pœnitentialibus_. This was followed by the Franciscan _Antesana_, the Dominican _Pisana_, and the Angelica of the Genoese Angelus of A.D. 1482, which Luther in A.D. 1520 burned along with the papal bull and decretals. The views of the different casuists greatly vary, and confuse rather than assist the conscience. Out of them grew the doctrine of probabilism (§ 149, 10). § 113.5. =The Founder of Natural Theology.=--The Spaniard =Raimund of Sabunde= settled as a physician in Toulouse in A.D. 1430, but afterwards turned his attention to theology. Seeing the need of infusing new life into the corrupt scholasticism, he sought to rescue it from utter formalism and fruitless casuistry by a return to simple, clear, and rational thinking. Anselm of Canterbury was his model of a clear and profound thinker and believing theologian (§ 101, 1). He also turned for stimulus and instruction to the book of nature. The result of his studies is seen in his _Theologia naturalis s. liber creaturarum_, published in A.D. 1436. God’s book of nature, in which every creature is as it were a letter, is the first and simplest source of knowledge accessible to the unlearned layman, and the surest, because free from all falsifications of heretics. But the fall and God’s plan of salvation have made an addition to it necessary, and this we have in the Scripture revelation. The two books coming from the one author cannot be contradictory, but only extend, confirm, and explain one another. The facts of revelation are the necessary presupposition or consequences of the book of nature. From the latter all religious knowledge is derivable by ascending through the four degrees of creation, _esse_, _vivere_, _sentire_, and _intelligere_, to the knowledge of man, and thence to the knowledge of the Creator as the highest and absolute unity, and by arguing that the acknowledgment of human sinfulness involved an admission of the need of redemption, which the book of revelation shows to be a fact. In carrying out this idea Raimund attaches himself closely to Anselm in his scientific reconciling of the natural and revealed idea of God and redemption. Although he never expressly contradicted any of the Church doctrines, the