In Wegscheider's _Institutiones Dogmaticae_, a work which for nearly half
a century has stood as an acknowledged and highly respected authority on
the systematic theology of the Rationalists, we read language to this
effect: "Since that doctrine (of supernaturalism) is encumbered with
various difficulties, every day made more manifest by the advances of
learning, especially historical, physical, and philosophical, there have
been amongst more recent theologians and philosophers not a few who, in
various ways, departing from it, thought it right to admit, even in the
investigation and explanation of divine things, not only that formal use
of human reason which regards only the method of expounding dogmas, but
also the material use, by which the subject-matter of the particular
doctrines is submitted to inquiry.
"Thus arose that of which the generic name is Rationalism, or that law
or rule of thinking, intimately united with the cultivation of talent
and mind, by which we think that as well in examining and judging of all
things presented to us in life and the range of universal learning, as
in those matters of most grave importance which relate to religion and
morals, we must follow strenuously the norm of reason rightly applied,
as of the highest faculty of the mind; which law of thinking and
perceiving, if it be applied to prove any positive religion (theological
Rationalism) lays it down as an axiom that religion is revealed to men
in no other manner than that which is agreeable both to the nature of
things and to reason, as the witness and interpreter of divine
providence; and teaches that the subject-matter of every supposed
supernatural revelation, is to be examined and judged according to the
ideas regarding religion and morality, which we have formed in the mind
by the help of reason.
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