“Impossibile est quod proprietas unius linguae servetur in alia.”[270] (“The idioms of one language cannot be preserved in a translation.”) And again: “Omnes philosophi fuerunt post patriarchas et prophetas ... et legerunt libros prophetarum et patriarcharum qui sunt in sacro textu.”[271] (“The philosophers of Greece came after the prophets of the Old Testament and read their works contained in the sacred text.”) In the first of these sentences Bacon shows his linguistic insight; in the second he reflects an uncritical view entertained since the time of the Church Fathers; in both, he writes with an order of words requiring no change in an English translation. In his time, Bacon had but a sorry fame, and his works no influence. The writings of his younger contemporary Thomas Aquinas exerted greater influence than those of any man after Augustine. They represent the culmination of scholasticism. He was Italian born, and his language, however difficult the matter, is lucidity itself. It is never rhetorical; but measured, temperate, and balanced; properly proceeding from the mind which weighed every proposition in the scales of universal consideration. Sometimes it gains a certain fervour from the clarity and import of the statement which it so lucidly conveys. In article eighth, of the first Questio, of Pars Prima of the _Summa theologiae_, Thomas thus decides that Theology is a rational (_argumentativa_) science: “Respondeo dicendum quod, sicut aliae scientiae non argumentantur ad sua principia probanda, sed ex principiis argumentantur ad ostendendum alia in ipsis scientiis; ita haec doctrina non argumentatur ad sua principia probanda, quae sunt articuli fidei; sed ex eis procedit ad aliquid aliud ostendendum; sicut Apostolus I ad Cor. xv., ex resurrectione Christi argumentatur ad resurrectionem communem probandam.