The _Dialogue_ was not much assailed by his rivals; probably it was not widely circulated. It is, however, an important monument of Abélard’s genius. It anticipated not merely the rationalistic attitude of modern theology, but also quite a number of the modifications of traditional belief which modern rational and ethical criticism has imposed. Abélard regards the ethical content of Christianity, and finds that it is only the elaboration or the reformation of the natural law, the true essence of religion. God has given this essential gift in every conscience and in every religion; there are no outcasts from the plan of salvation; the higher excellence of the Christian religion lies in its clearer formulation of the law of life. The popular notions of heaven and hell and deity are travesties of true Christian teaching. God, as a purely spiritual being, is the supreme good, and heaven is an approach to Him by obedience; hell, isolation from Him. When we remember that Abélard had before him only the works of the fathers and such recent speculations as those of Anselm, we shall surely recognise the action of a mind of the highest order in these debates. The second work was not less remarkable. It was a collection of sentences from the fathers on points of dogma. So far the compilation would be an admirable one, but apart from the growing accusation that Abélard was wanting in reverence for the authority of the fathers, there was the suspicious circumstance that he had grouped these eighteen hundred texts in contradictory columns. Thus one hundred and fifty-eight questions are put by the compiler, relating to God, the Trinity, the Redemption, the Sacraments, and so forth. The quotations from the fathers are then arranged in two parallel columns, one half giving an affirmative, and the rest a negative, answer to the question. Such a work would be perfectly intelligible if it came from the pen of a modern freethinker. Abélard’s _Sic et Non_ (Yes and No), as the work came to be called, has borne many interpretations. Such careful and impartial students of Abélard’s work as Deutsch pronounce the critical element in it to be ‘constructive, not sceptical.’ Most probably it was the intention of the compiler to shatter the excessive regard of his contemporaries for the words of the fathers, and thus to open the way for independent speculation on the deposit of revelation (to which he thought he had as much right as Jerome or Augustine), by making a striking exhibition of their fallibility. Neither of these works seems to have fallen into the hands of Alberic. Twenty years afterwards we find a theologian complaining of the difficulty of obtaining some of Abélard’s works, which had been kept secret. He probably refers to one or both of these works. However that may be, Abélard wrote a third book during his stay at Maisoncelle, and on this the charge of heresy was fixed.