At first we see the dawning of that philosophic rationalism, which gives out a certain degree of brightness, but which can neither conquer error nor still less establish truth. In the ninth century there was a learned scholar in Ireland, who afterwards settled at the court of Charles the Bald. He was a strange mysterious man, of profound thought, and as much raised above the doctors of his age by the boldness of his ideas, as Charlemagne above the princes of his day by the force of his will. John Scot Erigena--that is, a native of Ireland and not of Ayr, as some have supposed--was a meteor in the theological heavens. With a great philosophic genius he combined a cheerful jesting disposition. One day, while seated at table opposite to Charles the Bald, the latter archly inquired of him: "What is the distance between a _Scot_ and a _Sot_?" "The width of the table," was his ready answer, which drew a smile from the king. While the doctrine of Bede, Boniface, and even Alcuin was traditional, servile, and, in one word, Romanist, that of Scot was mystical, philosophic, free, and daring. He sought for the truth not in the word or in the Church, but in himself:--"The knowledge of ourselves is the true source of religious wisdom. Every creature is a theophany--a manifestation of God; since revelation presupposes the existence of truth, it is this truth, which is above revelation, with which man must set himself in immediate relation, leaving him at liberty to show afterwards its harmony with scripture, and the other theophanies. We must first employ reason, and then authority. Authority proceeds from reason, and not reason from authority."[119] Yet this bold thinker, when on his knees, could give way to aspirations full of piety: "O Lord Jesus," exclaimed he, "I ask no other happiness of Thee, but to understand, unmixed with deceitful theories, the word that Thou hast inspired by thy Holy Spirit! Show thyself to those who ask for Thee alone!" But while Scot rejected on the one hand certain traditional errors, and in particular the doctrine of transubstantiation which was creeping into the church, he was near falling as regards God and the world into other errors savouring of pantheism.[120] The philosophic rationalism of the contemporary of Charles the Bald--the strange product of one of the obscurest periods of history (850)--was destined after the lapse of many centuries to be taught once more in Great Britain as a modern invention of the most enlightened age. [119] Prius ratione utendum ac deinde auctoritate. Auctoritas ex vera ratione processit, ratio vero nequaquam ex auctoritate. De div. prædestin. [120] Deum in omnibus esse. (De divisione naturæ, b. 74.) That God is in all things. [Sidenote: ALFRED AND THE BIBLE.]