"This upstart astrologer,' this 'fool who wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy,' for 'sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still

and not the earth.'" 11 Well might Erasmus say: "Learning perished where Luther reigned." 12

man

was

The general belief of this later day may be thus stated. Accepting the calculation of the famous Dr. Lightfoot, vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, created by the Trinity on 23d October, 4004 B. C., at nine o'clock in the morning." Moreover, his studies enabled him to declare that "heaven and earth, center and circumference, were created all together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water." 13 Melanchthon put the date of creation at 3963 B. c. while Pope Urban VIII fixed it in the year 5199 B. C. The chronology of Bishop Usher was printed in many editions of the Bible and was quite generally regarded as almost if not quite inspired. So accurate was this general scheme considered that in the nineteenth century Dr. Adam Clark wrote "to preclude the possibility of a mistake, the unerring Spirit of God directed Moses in the selection of his facts and the ascertaining of his dates," while a famous Egyptologist, Wilkinson, modified the dates got from the monuments to fit the accepted date of the flood.14 Yet two hundred years after Lightfoot, it was known that a great and ancient civilization flourished in Asia at the time he thought creation took place.

All the different kinds of plants and animals had been created in the week set apart for that purpose. The

crowning achievement was man, woman being but an afterthought a side issue, as it were and many held that man had one less rib than woman. The contrast between man and the other animals was often emphasized. He had been directly formed by the hands of God, while the others had appeared at the call of his voice from the earth or sea. In spite of the threats of the Athanasian creed against all who should "confound the persons or "divide the substance of the Trinity" there was considerable discussion as to the actual creator. In 1667 Abraham Milius, author of "The Origin of Animals and the Migrations of Peoples," suggested that: "the earth and the waters, and especially the heat of the sun with that slimy and putrid quality which seems to be inherent in the soil, may furnish the origin for fishes, terrestrial animals and birds." 15 He seems to have based this idea on the sentence "Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind." In the seventh century St. Isidore had claimed that "bees are generated from decomposed veal, beetles from horseflesh, grasshoppers from mules, scorpions from crabs." 18

This conception of a secondary or indirect creation of many lower forms was widely held.

Early in the eighteenth century Nehemiah Grew of the Royal Society wrote in his "Cosmologia Sacra" that "a crane which is scurvy meat, lays but two eggs but a pheasant and partridge, both excellent meat, lay and hatch fifteen or twenty. . . . Those of value which lay few at a time sit the oftener, as the woodcock and the dove... If nettles sting, it is to secure an excellent medicine for children and cattle. . . . If the bramble hurts man, it makes all the better hedge. If it chances to prick the owner, it tears the thief. Weasels, kites, and other

15 WHITE, A. D. o. c., p. 46. 16 Ibid., pp. 1-55.

hurtful animals induce us to watchfulness, thistles and moles to good husbandry; lice oblige us to cleanliness in our bodies; spiders in our houses, and the moth in our clothes." 17 Inasmuch as all was created for man, disease, pestilence, storm and famine were but mysterious exercise of God's will for man's benefit. The elements were used to influence men, as warnings, or as punishments for sin. Tertullian thought the Scripture proved that lightning was identical with hell fire. Then came a gradual growth of a belief in the diabolical origin of storms which might be offset by exorcism. Luther claimed that the sign of the cross with the use of the text "The word was made flesh" would put storms to flight.

Man created in the image of God was perfect from a physical standpoint. Therefore though manslaughter was common and lightly regarded, the dissection of the body was forbidden as impious. What God had wished man to know about the nature of things had been revealed in the Scriptures. Moreover Eve's curiosity had resulted in the fall of Adam and the imposition upon the human race of the curse of work. Inquiry was therefore taboo. Against all inquiry which in any way might reflect on ancient beliefs the church, whether Catholic or Protestant, threw its mighty influence.

In 1650 the Academy for the Study of Animals was founded at Naples but was suppressed by theologians. The Protestants opposed the founding of the Royal Society of London in 1645. Leopold de' Medici was bribed by a Cardinal's hat to neglect the Florentine Academy in which he was interested. Leibnitz was prevented by the priests from founding the Academy of Science at Vienna in 1712. Yet in spite of the efforts to defend "the sacred 17 WHITE, A. D. o. c., p. 43.

deposit of truth committed to the church," thinking men were driven to new conceptions. Campanella was imprisoned, Copernicus escaped the inquisition by a timely death, Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600, the aged Galileo was forced to recant; yet these men with Kepler, Descartes and Newton destroyed the Ptolemaic system. Against Newton it was urged that he "took from God that direct action on his works so constantly ascribed to him in Scripture and transferred it to material mechanism' and that he 'substituted gravitation for Providence.' 9" 18 Notwithstanding the opposition it became clear that the sun and not the earth was the center of our system.

The discovery of the compass, the sextant, the worldwide journeys of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries furnished a mass of facts which simply refused to be classified on the old basis.

The fossil remains discovered from time to time caused questions. Zenophanes (500 B. C.) as well as Leonardo da Vinci in the fifteenth century had correctly explained them but their suggestions were not accepted. They were due to some "formative quality" or "plastic virtue" of the soil; to "lapidific juice"; to "the influence of heavenly bodies." Perhaps they had been put there by the devil to tempt men to desert their faith or God had established them to mock man's curiosity. The flood was also accepted as explanation, though the fact that these forms did not correspond to any that Noah seemed to have had in the ark was not unnoticed. The great remains of mammoth and mastodon appeared to verify the statement that "there were giants in those days," and they were sometimes permanently exhibited in churches as 18 WHITE, A. D. o. c., p. 16.

proofs of the Bible. In 1718 a book was published which stated that the height of Adam was 123 feet 9 inches, Eve, 118 feet, 9 inches.

The discovery of strange forms of life in the so-called New World was most embarrassing. St. Paul had declared that the gospel had gone to all lands, hence Augustine had decided that there could be no persons living in the antipodes or other unknown and distant areas. He thought too that God had caused, or permitted, the angels to distribute the species over the earth. In 1667 Milius was puzzled by the fact that many animals common on earth were not found near Mt. Ararat. He could not conceive of their wandering so far. The suggestion that they had been carried by human agency was opposed as early as 1590 by Joseph Acosta in his "Natural and Moral History of the Indies." "It was sufficient, yea, very much, for men driven against their willes by tempest, in so long and unknowne a voyage, to escape with their owne lives, without busying themselves to carrie Woolves and Foxes, and to nourish them at sea." 19 Even assuming that the animals in some mysterious fashion had made their way over earth, how could such species as the sloths of South America make so great a journey from Ararat? If the kangaroo, duck-bill and apteryx could reach Australia, why not the carnivorous wolves and tigers of the Asian mainland? When relatively few species were known the story of Noah's ark did not seem incredible, particularly as Origen had asserted that the cubit was six times longer than had been supposed and Bede had claimed that Noah spent 100 years in its construction, while the animals on board were miraculously fed. Even these 19 WHITE, A. D. o. c., p. 46.