THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 389 



tends up to the first solid vault or firmament, where live the angels, 

 a main part of whose business it is to push and pull the sun and plan- 

 ets to and fro. Next he takes the text, " Let there be a firmament in 

 the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters," 

 and other texts from Genesis.^ To tliese he adds the texts from the 

 Psalms, " Praise him ye heaven of heavens, and ye waters that be 

 above the heavens," * casts that outburst of poetry into his crucible 

 with the other texts, and, after subjecting them to sundry j^eculiar pro- 

 cesses, brings out the theory that over this first vault is a vast cistern 

 containing the w^aters. He then takes the expression in Genesis 

 reo-ardine: the "windows of heaven"^ and establishes a doctrine 

 regarding the regulation of the rain, which is afterward supplemented 

 by the doctrine that the angels not only push and pull the heavenly 

 bodies, to light the earth, but also open and close the windows of 

 heaven to water it. 



To find the character of the surface of the earth, Cosmas studies 

 the table of shew-bread in the Tabernacle. The dimensions of that 

 table prove to him that the earth is flat and twice as long as broad. 

 The four corners of the table symbolize the four seasons. 



To account for the movement of the sun, Cosmas suggests that at 

 the north of the earth is a great mountain, and that, at night, the sun is 

 carried behind this. But some of the commentators ventured to ex- 

 press a doubt here. They thought that the sun was pushed into a 

 great pit at night, and was pulled out in the morning. 



Nothing can be more touching in its simplicity than Cosmas's 

 closing of his great argument. He bursts forth in raptures, declaring 

 that Moses, the prophets, evangelists, and apostles, agree to the truth 

 of his doctrine.* 



Such was the foitress built against human science in the sixth cen- 

 tury, by Cosmas ; and it stood. The innovators attacked it in vain. 

 The greatest minds in the Church devoted themselves to buttressing 

 it with new texts, and throwing out new outworks of theologic rea- 

 soning. It stood firm for two hundred years, when a bishop Vir- 

 gilius of Salzburg asserts his belief in the existence of the antipodes. 



It happened that thei-e then stood in Germany, in the first years 

 of the eighth century, one of the greatest and noblest of men St. 

 Boniface. His learning was of the best then known ; in labors he was 

 a worthy successor to the apostles ; his genius for Christian work made 



' Genesis i. 6. ^ Psalm cxlviii. 4. ^ Genesis vii. 11. 



* See Montfivucon, "Collectio Nova Patruni," Paris, 1706, vol. ii., p. 188; also, pp. 

 298, 299. The text is illustrated with engravings showing walls and solid vault (firma- 

 ment), with the whole apparatus of " fountains of the great deep," " windows of heaven," 

 angels, and the mountain behind which the sun is drawn. For an imperfect reduction 

 of one of them, see article " Maps," in Knight's " Dictionary of Mechanics," New York, 

 1875. For still another theory, very droll, and thought out on similar principles, see 

 Mungo Park, cited in De Morgan, " Paradoxes," 309. For Cosmas's joyful summing 

 up, see Montfaucon, " Collectio Nova Patrum," vol. ii., p. 255. 



