in Church History, one of the three orders of theologians before the Reformation. They were so called from basing their systems or dogmas on the authority of Scripture and the judgment of the Fathers. Opposed to them were the Mystics, who rejected the Scripture, and framed their opinions according to the dictates of spiritual intuition; and the Scholastics, who paid an almost sacred deference to the Aristotelian philosophy. Dogmatics is also used as a contraction for dogmatic theology, or the systematic exhibition of the doctrines of revelation.