Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 8.djvu/403

Rh to Scripture: by which, of course, they meant their interpretation of Scripture.

Among the first who took up arms against the new thinkers was Eusebius. He endeavored to turn off these ideas by bringing science into contempt. He endeavored to make the innovators understand that he and the fathers of the Church despised all such inquiries. Speaking of the innovations in physical science, he said: "It is not through ignorance of the things admired by them, but through contempt of their useless labor, that we think little of these matters, turning our souls to better things."

Lactantius asserted the ideas of those studying astronomy to be "mad and senseless."

But the attempt to "flank" the little phalanx of thinkers did not succeed, of course. Even such men as Lactantius and Eusebius cannot pooh-pooh down a new scientific idea. The little band of thinkers went on, and the doctrine of the rotundity of the earth naturally led to the consideration of the tenants of the earth's surface, and another germ idea was warmed into life—the idea of the existence of the antipodes, the idea of the existence of countries and men on the hemisphere opposite to ours.

At this the war spirit waxed hot. Those great and good men determined to fight. To all of them such doctrines seemed dangerous; to most of them they seemed damnable. St. Basil and St. Ambrose were tolerant enough to allow that a man might be saved who believed the earth to be round, and inhabited on its opposite sides; but the great majority of the Fathers of the Church utterly denied the possibility of salvation to such misbelievers.

Lactantius asks ". . . Is there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads?—that the crops and trees grow downward? that the rains and snow and