i 5 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



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 

 difficulties in Scripture by claiming that man existed on earth be- 

 fore 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 refutations of his 

 arguments had appeared ; the Parliament of Paris burned the 

 book, and the Grand Yicar of the archdiocese 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. 



But, in spite of warnings like this, we see the new idea crop- 

 ping 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 Oriental 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 antiquities of Egypt have been involved in the 

 deepest obscurity by the very interpreters of her chronology, who 

 have jumbled everything up {qui omnia susque deque permiscue- 

 runt), so as to make them match with their own reckonings of 

 Hebrew chronology: truly a very bad example, and quite un- 

 worthy of religious writers." 



This sturdy protest of Sir John against the dominant system 

 and against the " jumbling " by which Eusebius had endeavored 

 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 volumes pleading for a period 

 somewhat longer than that generally allowed, and insisting that 

 the received Hebrew text was grossly vitiated as regards chronol- 

 ogy, even this poor favor was refused them ; the great mass of 

 believers found it more comfortable to hold fast the faith com- 

 mitted to them by Usher, and it remained settled that man was 

 created about four thousand years before our era. 



This tide of theological reasoning rolled on through the eight- 

 eenth century, swollen by the biblical researches of leading com- 

 mentators, Catholic and Protestant, until it came in great majesty 

 and force into our own nineteenth century ; and it was well re- 

 ceived. At the very beginning of our 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." 



