The Warfare of Science with Theology by A. D. White

[_Maksutov]

After a statement like this we may fitly ask, Which is
the more likely to strengthen Christianity for its work in
the twentieth century which we are now about to enter —
a large, manly, honest, fearless utterance like this of Arthur
Stanley, or hair-splitting sophistries, bearing in their every
line the germs of failure, like those attempted by Mr. Glad-
stone?

The world is finding that the scientific revelation of crea-
tion is ever more and more in accordance with worthy con-
ceptions of that great Power working in and through the
universe. More and more it is seen that /inspiration has
never ceased, and that its prophets and priests are not those
who work to fit the letter of its older literature to the needs
of dogmas and sects, but those, above all others, who pa-
tiently, fearlessly, and reverently devote themselves to the
search for truth as truth, in the faith that there is a Power in
the universe wise enough to make truth-seeking safe and
good enough to make truth-telling useful."

*For the Huxley-Gladstone controversy, see The Nineteenth Century for 1885-
'86. For Canon Driver, see his article. The Cosmogony of Genesis, in The Ex-
positor for January, 1886.


CHAPTER VI.

THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN, EGYPTOLOGY, AND
ASSYRIOLOGY.


I. THE SACRED CHRONOLOGY.

In the great ranges of investigation which bear most
directly upon the origin of man, there are two in which
Science within the last few years has gained final victories.
The significance of these in changing, and ultimately in re-
versing, one of the greatest currents of theological thought,
can hardly be overestimated ; not even the tide set in motion
by Cusa, Copernicus, and Galileo was more powerful to
bring in a new epoch of belief.

The first of these conquests relates to the antiquity of y
man on the earth.

The fathers of the early Christian Church, receiving all
parts of our sacred books as equally inspired, laid little, if
any, less stress on the myths, legends, genealogies, and tribal,
family, and personal traditions contained in the Old and the
New Testaments, than upon the most powerful appeals, the
most instructive apologues, and the most lofty poems of
prophets, psalmists, and apostles. As to the age of our
planet and the life of man upon it, they found in the Bible a
carefully recorded series of periods, extending from Adam
to the building of the Temple at Jerusalem, the length of
each period being explicitly given.

[_Maksutov]

Thus they had a biblical chronology — full, consecutive,
and definite— extending from the first man created to an
event of known date well within ascertained profane his-
tory ; as a result, the early Christian commentators arrived
at conclusions varying somewhat, but in the main agree-
ing. Some, like Origen, Eusebius, Lactantius, Clement of
Alexandria, and the great fathers generally of the first
three centuries, dwelling especially upon the Septuagint
version of the Scriptures, thought that man's creation took
place about six thousand years before the Christian era.
Strong confirmation of this view was found in a simple
piece of purely theological reasoning : for, just as the seven
candlesticks of the Apocalypse were long held to prove the
existence of seven heavenly bodies revolving about the earth,
so it was felt that the six days of creation prefigured six
thousand years during which the earth in its first form was
to endure ; and that, as the first Adam came on the sixth
day, Christ, the second Adam, had come at the sixth millen-
nial period. Theophilus, Bishop of Antioch, in the second
century clinched this argument with the text, " One day is
with the Lord as a thousand years."

On the other hand, Eusebius and St. Jerome, dwelling
more especially upon the Hebrew text, which we are brought
up to revere, thought that man's origin took place at a some-
what shorter period before the Christian era ; and St. Je-
rome's overwhelming authority made this the dominant view
throughout western Europe during fifteen centuries.

The simplicity of these great fathers as regards chronol-
ogy is especially reflected from the tables of Eusebius. In
these, Moses, Joshua, and Bacchus,— Deborah, Orpheus, and
the Amazons, — Abimelech, the Sphinx, and Oedipus, appear
together as personages equally real, and their positions in
chronology equally ascertained.

[_Maksutov]

At times great bitterness was aroused between those
holding the longer and those holding the shorter chronology,
but after all the difference between them, as we now see,
was trivial ; and it may be broadly stated that in the early
Church, ** always, everywhere, and by all," it was held as
certain, upon the absolute warrant of Scripture, that man
was created from four to six thousand years before the
Christian era.

To doubt this, and even much less than this, was to risk
damnation. St. Augustine insisted that belief in the antip-
odes and in the longer duration of the earth than six thou-
sand years were deadly heresies, equally hostile to Scripture.

Philastrius, the friend of St. Ambrose and St. Augustine,
whose fearful catalogue of heresies served as a guide to in-
tolerance throughout the Middle Ages, condemned with the
same holy horror those who expressed doubt as to the ortho-
dox number of years since the beginning of the world, and
those who doubted an earthquake to be the literal voice of
an angry God, or who questioned the plurality of the heav-
ens, or who gainsaid the statement that God brings out the
stars from his treasures and hangs them up in the solid
firmament above the earth every night.

About the beginning of the seventh century Isidore of
Seville, the great theologian of his time, took up the subject.
He accepted the dominant view not only of Hebrew but of
all other chronologies, without anything like real criticism.
The childlike faith of his system may be imagined from his
summaries which follow. He tells us :

'' Joseph lived one hundred and five years. Greece be-
gan to cultivate grain."

" The Jews were in slavery in Egypt one hundred and
forty-four years. Atlas discovered astrology."

' Joshua ruled for twenty -seven years. Ericthonius yoked
horses together."

' Othniel, forty years. Cadmus introduced letters into
Greece."

" Deborah, forty years. Apollo discovered the art of
medicine and invented the cithara."

" Gideon, forty years. Mercury invented the lyre and
gave it to Orpheus."

[_Maksutov]

Reasoning in this general way, Isidore kept well under
the longer date ; and, the great theological authority of
southern Europe having thus spoken, the question was vir-
tually at rest throughout Christendom for nearly a hundred
years.

Early in the eighth century the Venerable Bede took up
the problem. Dwelling especially upon the received He-
brew text of the Old Testament, he soon entangled himself
in very serious difficulties ; but, in spite of the great fathers
of the first three centuries, he reduced the antiquity of man
on the earth by nearly a thousand years, and, in spite of
mutterings against him as coming dangerously near a limit
which made the theological argument from the six days of
creation to the six ages of the world look doubtful, his au-
thority had great weight, and did much to fix western Europe
in its allegiance to the general system laid down by Eusebius
and Jerome.

In the twelfth century this belief was re-enforced by a
tide of thought from a very different quarter. Rabbi Moses
Maimonides and other Jewish scholars, by careful study of
the Hebrew text, arrived at conclusions diminishing the an-
tiquity of man still further, and thus gave strength through-
out the Middle Ages to the shorter chronology : it was
incorporated into the sacred science of Christianity ; and
Vincent of Beauvais, in his great Spcciihivi Historialc, forming
part of that still more enormous work intended to sum up
all the knowledge possessed by the ages of faith, placed the
creation of man at about four thousand years before our era.*
At the Reformation this view was not disturbed. The
same manner of accepting the sacred text which led Luther,
Melanchthon, and the great Protestant leaders generally, to
oppose the Copernican theory, fixed them firmly in this
biblical chronology; the keynote was sounded for them by
Luther when he said, '' We know, on the authority of Moses,
that longer ago than six thousand years the world did not
exist." Melanchthon, more exact, fixed the creation of man
at 3963 B. c.

[_Maksutov]

* For a table summing up the periods, from Adam to the building of the Tem-
ple, explicitly given in the Scriptures, see the admirable paper on The Pope and
the Bible, in The Contemporary Review for April, 1893. For the date of man's
creation as given by leading chronologists in various branches. of the Church, see
L'Art de VMfier les Dates, Paris, 1819, vol. i, pp. 27 et seq. In this edition there
are sundry typographical errors ; compare with Wallace, True Age of the World,
London, 1844. As to preference for the longer computation by the fathers of the
Church, see Clinton, Fasti Hellenici, vol. ii, p. 291. For the sacred significance of
the six days of creation in ascertaining the antiquity of man, see especially Eicken,
Gesahichte der mittelalterlichen Weltanschauung ; also Wallace, True Age of the
World, pp. 2, 3. For the views of St. Augustine, see Topinard, Anthropologie,
citing the De Civ. Dei., lib. xvi, c. viii, lib. xii, c. x. For the views of Philastrius,
see the De Hceresibus, c. 102, 112, et passim, in Migne, tome xii. For Eusebius's
simple credulity, see the tables in Palmer's Egyptian Chronicles, vol. ii. pp. 828,
829. For Bede, see Usher's Chronologia Sacra, cited in Wallace, True Age of the
World, p. 35. For Isidore of Seville, see the Etyjnologia, lib. v, c. 39 ; also lib. iii,
in Migne, tome Ixxxii.


THE SACRED CHRONOLOGY.

But the great Christian scholars continued the old en-
deavour to make the time of man's origin more precise : there
seems to have been a sort of fascination in the subject which
developed a long array of chronologists, all weighing the
minutest indications in our sacred books, until the Protestant
divine De VignoUes, who had given forty years to the study
of biblical chronology, declared in 1738 that he had gathered
no less than two hundred computations based upon Scrip-
ture, and no two alike.

As to the Roman Church, about 1580 there was published,
by authority of Pope Gregory XIII, the Roman Marty rol-
ogy, and this, both as originally published and as revised in
1640 under Pope Urban VIII, declared that the creation of
man took place 5199 years before Christ.

But of all who gave themselves up to these chronological
studies, the man who exerted the most powerful influence
upon the dominant nations of Christendom was Archbishop
Usher. In 1650 he published his Annals of the Ancient and
Neiv Testaments, and it at once became the greatest authority
for all English-speaking peoples. Usher was a man of deep
and wide theological learning, powerful in controversy ; and
his careful conclusion, after years of the most profound study
of the Hebrew Scriptures, was that man was created 4004
years before the Christian era. His verdict was widely re-
ceived as final ; his dates were inserted in the marg^ins of the
authorized version of the English Bible, and were soon prac-
tically regarded as equally inspired with the sacred text
itself: to question them seriously was to risk preferment in
the Church and reputation in the world at large.

The same adhesion to the Hebrew Scriptures which had
influenced Usher brought leading men of the older Church
to the same view : men who would have burned each other
at the stake for their differences on other points, agreed on
this : Melanchthon and Tostatus, Lightfoot and Jansen, Sal-
meron and Scaliger, Petavius and Kepler, inquisitors and
reformers, Jesuits and Jansenists, priests and rabbis, stood
together in the belief that the creation of man was proved
by Scripture to have taken place between 3900 and 4004
years before Christ.

[_Maksutov]

In spite of the severe pressure of this line of authorities.
extending from St. Jerome and Eusebius to Usher and Pe-
tavius, in favour of this scriptural chronology, even devoted
Christian scholars had sometimes felt obliged to revolt.
The first great source of difficulty was increased knowledge
regarding the Egyptian monuments. As far back as the last
years of the sixteenth century Joseph Scaliger had done
what he could to lay the foundations of a more scientific
treatment of chronology, insisting especially that the his-
torical indications in Persia, in Babylon, and above all in
Egypt, should be brought to bear on the question. More
than that, he had the boldness to urge that the chronological
indications of the Hebrew Scriptures should be fully and
critically discussed in the light of Egyptian and other rec-
ords, without any undue bias from theological considera-
tions. His idea may well be called inspired ; yet it had little
effect as regards a true view of the antiquity of man, even
upon himself, for the theological bias prevailed above all his
reasonincrs, even in his own mind. Well does a brilliant
modern writer declare that, ''among the multitude of strong
men in modern times abdicating their reason at the com-
mand of their prejudices, Joseph Scaliger is perhaps the
most striking example."

Early in the following century Sir Walter Raleigh, in his
History of the World (1603-1616), pointed out the danger of
adhering to the old system. He, too, foresaw one of the re-
sults of modern investigation, stating it in these words,
which have the ring of prophetic inspiration : '' For in Abra-
ham's time all the then known parts of the world were de-
veloped. . . . Egypt had many magnificent cities, . . . and
these not built with sticks, but of hewn stone, . . . which
magnificence needed a parent of more antiquity than these
other men have supposed." In view of these considerations
Raleigh followed the chronology of the Septuagint version,
which enabled him to give to the human race a few more
years than were usually allowed.

About the middle of the seventeenth century Isaac Vos-
sius, one of the most eminent scholars of Christendom, at-
tempted to bring the prevailing belief into closer accordance
with ascertained facts, but, save by a chosen few, his ef-
forts were rejected. In some parts of Europe a man holding
new views on chronology was by no means safe from bodily
harm. As an example of the extreme pressure exerted by
the old theological system at times upon honest scholars, we
may take the case of La Peyrere, who about the middle of
the seventeenth century put forth his book on the Pre-
Adamites — an attempt to reconcile sundry well-known diffi-
culties in Scripture by claiming that man existed on earth
before the time of Adam. He was taken in hand at once;
great theologians rushed forward to attack him from all
parts of Europe ; within fifty years thirty-six different refu-
tations of his arguments had appeared ; the Parliament of
Paris burned the book, and the Grand Vicar of the archdio-
cese of Mechlin threw him into prison and kept him there
until he was forced, not only to retract his statements, but to
abjure his Protestantism.

[_Maksutov]

In England, opposition to the growing truth was hardly
less earnest. Especially strong was Pearson, afterward Mas-
ter of Trinity and Bishop of Chester. In his treatise on the
Creed, published in 1659, which has remained a theologic
classic, he condemned those who held the earth to be more
than fifty-six hundred years old, insisted that the first man
was created just six days later, declared that the Egyptian
records were forged, and called all Christians to turn from
them to '' the infallible annals of the Spirit of God."

But, in spite of warnings like these, we see the new idea
cropping out in various parts of Europe. In 1672, Sir John
Marsham published a work in which he showed himself bold
and honest. After describing the heathen sources of Orien-
tal history, he turns to the Christian writers, and, having
used the history of Egypt to show that the great Church
authorities were not exact, he ends one important argument
with the following words : "Thus the most interesting an-
tiquities of Egypt have been involved in the deepest obscu-
rity by the very interpreters of her chronology, who have
jumbled everything up {qui omnia siisqiic deque pcrmisaierii7it\
so as to make them match with their own reckonings of He-
brew chronology. Truly a very bad example, and quite un-
worthy of religious writers."

This sturdy protest of Sir John against the dominant sys-
tem and against the "jumbling" by which Eusebius had
endeavoured to cut down ancient chronology within safe and
sound orthodox limits, had little effect. Though eminent
chronologists of the eighteenth century, like Jackson, Hales,
and Drummond, gave forth multitudes of ponderous vol-
umes pleading for a period somewhat longer than that gen-
erally allowed, and insisting that the received Hebrew text
was grossly vitiated as regards chronology, even this poor
favour was refused them ; the mass of believers found it
more comfortable to hold fast the faith committed to them
by Usher, and it remained settled that man was created
about four thousand years before our era.

To those who wished even greater precision, Dr. John
Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge,
the great rabbinical scholar of his time, gave his famous
demonstration from our sacred books that "heaven and
earth, centre and circumference, were created together, in
the same instant, and clouds full of water," and that *' this
work took place and man was created by the Trinity on the
twenty-third of October, 4004 B. c, at nine o'clock in the
morning."

This tide of theological reasoning rolled on through the
eighteenth century, swollen by the biblical researches of
leading commentators. Catholic and Protestant, until it came
in much majesty and force into our own nineteenth century.
At the very beginning of the century it gained new strength
from various great men in the Church, among whom may
be especially named Dr. Adam Clarke, who declared that,
*' 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."

[_Maksutov]

All opposition to the received view seemed broken down,
and as late as 1835 — indeed, as late as 1850 — came an announce-
ment in the work of one of the most eminent Egyptologists,
Sir J. G. Wilkinson, to the effect that he had modified the
results he had obtained from Egyptian monuments, in order
that his chronology might not interfere with the received
date of the Deluge of Noah.*

* For Lightfoot, see his Prolegomena relating to the age of the world at the birth
of Christ ; see also in the edition of his works, London, 1822, vol. iv, pp. 64, 112.
For Scaliger, see the De Emendatione Temporum, 1583 ; also Mark Pattison, Es-

But all investigators were not so docile as Wilkinson, and
there soon came a new train of scientific thought which rap-
idly undermined all this theological chronology. Not to
speak of other noted men, we have early in the present cen-
tury Young, Champollion, and Rosellini, beginning a new
epoch in the study of the Egyptian monuments. Nothing
could be more cautious than their procedure, but the evi-
dence was soon overwhelming in favour of a vastly longer
existence of man in the Nile Valley than could be made to
agree with even the longest duration then allowed by theo-
logians.

For, in spite of all the suppleness of men like Wilkinson,
it became evident that, whatever system of scriptural chro-
nology was adopted, Egypt was the seat of a flourishing civ-
ilization at a period before the *' Flood of Noah," and that no
such flood had ever interrupted it. This was bad, but worse
remained behind : it was soon clear that the civilization of
Egypt began earlier than the time assigned for the creation
of man, even according to the most liberal of the sacred
chronologists.

As time went on, this became more and more evident.
The long duration assigned to human civilization in the frag-
ments of Manetho, the Egyptian scribe at Thebes in the third
century B. c, was discovered to be more accordant with truth
than the chronologies of the great theologians ; and, as the
present century has gone on, scientific results have been
reached absolutely fatal to the chronological view based by
the universal Church upon Scripture for nearly two thou-
sand years.

says, Oxford, 1889, vol. i, pp. 162 et seq. For Raleigh's misgivings, see his History
of the World, London, 1614, p. 227, book li of part i, section 7 of chapter i ; also Clin-
ton's Fasti Hellenici, vol. ii, p. 293. For Usher, see his Annates Vet. et Nov. Test.,
London, 1650. For Pearson, see his Exposition of the Creed, sixth edition, London,
1692, pp. 59 et seq. For Marsham, see his Chronicus Canon yEgypticus, Ebraicus,
Gracus, et Disquisitiones, London, 1672. For La Peyrere, see especially Quatre-
fages, in Remie des Deux Mondes for 1861 ; also other chapters in this work. For
Jackson, Hales, and others, see Wallace's True Age of the World. For Wilkin-
son, see various editions of his work on Egypt. For Vignolles, see Leblois, vol. iii,
p. 617. As to the declarations in favour of the recent origin of man, sanctioned by
Popes Gregory XIII and Urban VTII, see Strauchius, cited in Wallace, p. 97. For
the general agreement of Church authorities, as stated, see LArt de Verifier les
Dates, as above. As to difficulties of scriptural chronology, see Ewald, History of
Israel, English translation, London

[_Maksutov]

was at the height of his reputation and power: a quiet,
earnest plea from him, even if it had been only for ordinary
fairness and a suspension of judgment, must have carried
much weight. His devoted pupil, Charles V, who sat on
the thrones of Germany and Spain, must at least have given
a hearing to such a plea. But, unfortunately. Apian was a
professor in an institution of learning under the strictest
Church control — the University of Ingolstadt. His foremost
duty was to teach safe science — to keep science within the
line of scriptural truth as interpreted by theological pro-
fessors. His great opportunity was lost. Apian continued
to maunder over the Ptolemaic theory and astrology in his
lecture-room. The attacks on the Copernican theory he
neither supported nor opposed ; he was silent ; and the cause
of his silence should never be forgotten so long as any
Church asserts its title to control university instruction.''

Doubtless many will exclaim against the Roman Catholic
Church for this ; but the simple truth is that Protestantism
was no less zealous against the new scientific doctrine. All
branches of the Protestant Church — Lutheran, Calvinist,
Anglican — vied with each other in denouncing the Coperni-
can doctrine as contrary to Scripture ; and, at a later period,
the Puritans showed the same tendency.

Said Martin Luther: ''People gave ear to an upstart
astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves, not
the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Who-
ever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system,
which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool
wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy ; but
sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to
stand still, and not the Earth." Melanchthon, mild as he was,
was not behind Luther in condemning Copernicus. In his
treatise on the Elements of Physics, published six years after
Copernicus's death, he says: ''The eyes are witnesses that

* For Joseph Acosta's statement, see the translation of his History, published
by the Hakluyt Society, chap. ii. For Peter Apian, see Madler, Geschichte der
Astrojiomie, Braunschweig, 1S73, vol. i, p. 141. For evidences of the special favour
of Charles V, see Delambre, Histoire de I' A stronomie ou Moyen Age, p. 390 ; also
Bruhns, in the Allgemeine deutsche Biographic. For an attempted apology for
him, see Gunther, Peter and Philipp Apian, Prag, 1882, p. 62.


the heavens revolve in the space of twenty-four hours. But
certain men, either from the love of novelty, or to make a
display of ingenuity, have concluded that the earth moves;
and they maintain that neither the eighth sphere nor the sun
revolves. . . . Now, it is a want of honesty and decency to
assert such notions publicly, and the example is pernicious.
It is the part of a good mind to accept the truth as revealed
by God and to acquiesce in it." Melanchthon then cites the
passages in the Psalms and Ecclesiastes, which he declares
assert positively and clearly that the earth stands fast and
that the sun moves around it, and adds eight other proofs of
his proposition that "the earth can be nowhere if not in the
centre of the universe." So earnest does this mildest of the
Reformers become, that he suggests severe measures to re-
strain such impious teachings as those of Copernicus.

[_Maksutov]

While Lutheranism was thus condemning the theory of
the earth's movement, other branches of the Protestant
Church did not remain behind. Calvin took the lead, in his
Commentary on Genesis, by condemning all who asserted that
the earth is not at the centre of the universe. He clinched
the matter by the usual reference to the first verse of the
ninety-third Psalm, and asked, " Who will venture to place
the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?"
Turretin, Calvin's famous successor, even after Kepler and
Newton had virtually completed the theory of Copernicus
and Galileo, put forth his compendium of theology, in which
he proved, from a multitude of scriptural texts, that the
heavens, sun, and moon move about the earth, which stands
still in the centre. In England we see similar theological
efforts, even after they had become evidently futile. Hutch-
inson's Moses's Principia, Dr. Samuel Pike's Sacred Philoso-
phy, the writings of Home, Bishop Horsley, and President
Forbes contain most earnest attacks upon the ideas of New-


* See the Tischreden in the Walsch edition of Luther's Works, 1743, vol. xxii,
p. 2260 ; also Melanchthon's Initia Doctrince Physiav. This treatise is cited under
a mistaken title by the Catholic World, September, 1870. The correct title is
as given above ; it will be found in the Corpus Reformatorutn, vol. xiii ( ed. Bret-
schneider, Halle, 1846), pp. 216, 217. See also Madler, vol. i, p. 176 ; also Lange,
Geschichte des Materialismus, vol. i, p. 217 ; also Prowe, Ueher die Abhdngi!:;keit
des Copernicus, Thorn, 1S65, p. 4 ; also note, pp. 5, 6, where text is given in full.

ton, such attacks being based upon Scripture. Dr. John
Owen, so famous in the annals of Puritanism, declared the
Copernican system a " delusive and arbitrary hypothesis,
contrary to Scripture " ; and even John Wesley declared
the new ideas to "tend toward infidelity.""

And Protestant peoples were not a whit behind Catholic
in following out such teachings. The people of Elbing made
themselves merry over a farce in which Copernicus was the
main object of ridicule. The people of Nuremberg, a Prot-
estant stronghold, caused a medal to be struck with inscrip-
tions ridiculing the philosopher and his theory.

Why the people at large took this view is easily under-
stood when we note the attitude of the guardians of learn-
ing, both Catholic and Protestant, in that age. It throws
great light upon sundry claims by modern theologians to
take charge of public instruction and of the evolution of
science. So important was it thought to have " sound learn-
ing " guarded and " safe science " taught, that in many of
the universities, as late as the end of the seventeenth cen-
tury, professors were forced to take an oath not to hold the
'* Pythagorean " — that is, the Copernican — idea as to the
movement of the heavenly bodies. As the contest went on,
professors were forbidden to make known to students the
facts revealed by the telescope. Special orders to this effect
were issued by the ecclesiastical authorities to the universi-
ties and colleges of Pisa, Innspruck, Louvain, Douay, Sala-
manca, and others. During generations we find the authori-
ties of these universities boasting that these godless doctrines
were kept aw^ay from their students. It is touching to hear
such boasts made then, just as it is touching now to hear
sundry excellent university authorities boast that they dis-
courage the reading of Mill, Spencer, and Darwin. Nor
were such attempts to keep the truth from students confined
to the Roman Catholic institutions of learning. Strange as
it may seem, nowhere were the facts confirming the Coper-
nican theory more carefully kept out of sight than at Wit-

* On the teachings of Protestantism as regards the Copernican theory, see
citations in Canon Farrar's History of Interpretation, preface, xviii ; also Rev.
Dr. Shields, of Princeton, The Final Philosophy, pp. Co, 6i.


tenberg — the university of Luther and Melanchthon. About
the middle of the sixteenth century there were at that centre
of Protestant instruction two astronomers of a very high
order, Rheticus and Reinhold ; both of these, after thorough
study, had convinced themselves that the Copernican sys-
tem was true, but neither of them was allowed to tell this
truth to his students. Neither in his lecture announcements
nor in his published works did Rheticus venture to make
the new system known, and he at last gave up his professor-
ship and left Wittenberg, that he might have freedom to
seek and tell the truth. Reinhold was even more wretch-
edly humiliated. Convinced of the truth of the new theory,
he was obliged to advocate the old ; if he mentioned the
Copernican ideas, he was compelled to overlay them with
the Ptolemaic. Even this was not thought safe enough, and
in 1571 the subject was intrusted to Peucer. He was emi-
nently *' sound," and denounced the Copernican theory in
his lectures as ''absurd, and unfit to be introduced into the
schools."