This mystic and unreasoning attitude brought him into fundamental antagonism with Abélard. To him faith was the soul’s first duty; reason might think itself fortunate if there were crumbs of knowledge in the accepted writings which it could digest. To reason, to ask a question, was honestly incomprehensible and abhorrent to him. He insisted that the rationalist told God he would not accept what he could not understand; whereas the rationalist was prevented by his own logic from questioning the veracity of the Infinite, and merely insisted that, in a world of hallucination and false pretence, it were well to make sure that the proposition in question really did come from God. Bernard thought reasoning about the Trinity implied irreverence or incredulity; Abélard felt it to be a high service to divine truth, in preparing it for minds which were not blessed with the mystic sense. Bernard believed Christ died purely and crudely to make amends to the Father; Abélard thought this would impute vindictiveness to God. And so on through a long list of dogmatic points which were of unspeakable importance in the eyes of the twelfth century. A conflict was inevitable. In Bernard’s thought Abélard was employing an extraordinary ability to the grave prejudice of the honour of God, the safety of the Church, and the supreme interest of humanity. Bernard would have deserted his principles and his clear subjective duty if he had remained silent. If he had ‘a quick ear’ to catch ‘the distant thunder roll of free inquiry,’ as Cotter Morison says, and no one questions, he must have turned his zealous attention to Abélard long ago, as we have already seen. But the rationalist had been rendered powerless in Brittany for some years. Now that he was teaching with great effectiveness at Paris once more, Bernard could not but take action.