The third letter, a kind of preface to Bernard’s list of errors and commentary thereon, is of the same unworthy temper, tortuous, diplomatic, misleading, and vituperative. It is not apparent on what ground Hausrath says this commentary represents Bernard’s speech at Sens; if it does so, we have another curious commentary on Bernard’s affirmation that he went to the synod unprepared. However that may be, the letter is a singular composition, when we remember that it accompanied an appeal to a higher court, to which the case had been reserved. It opens with a declaration that ‘the see of Peter’ is the due and natural tribunal to which to refer ‘all scandals that arise in the Kingdom of God’; a declaration which is hardly consistent with the assurance, when it is necessary to defend their condemnation of Abélard, that his appeal ‘seems to us wonderful.’ Then follows the familiar caricature. ‘We have here in France an old master who has just turned theologian, who has played with the art of rhetoric from his earliest years and now raves about the Holy Scriptures [Abélard had been teaching Scripture and theology for the last twenty-six years]. He is endeavouring to resuscitate doctrines that were condemned and buried long ago, and to these he adds new errors of his own. A man who, in his inquiries into all there is in heaven above or earth below, is ignorant of nothing save the word “I do not know.” He lifts his eyes to the heavens, and peers into the hidden things of God, then returns to us with discourse of things that man is not permitted to discuss.’ This last sentence, considered as a charge by Bernard of Clairvaux against others, is amusing. Bernard spent half his time in searching the hidden things of God, and the other half in discoursing of them. But Abélard conceived them otherwise than he. Thus was the supreme judge instructed in his part, whilst the foolish Abélard lingered idly in Paris, not improbably, as Bernard says, boasting of his friends at the curia. It was very possible that he had friends at Rome. Deutsch suspects the existence of a faction in the sacred college, which was opposed to Innocent and the Chancellor Haymerick, and would be favourable to Abélard. Bernard was not the man to leave a single risk unchallenged—or to the care of the Holy Ghost.