NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 581 



order of Dominions, receives the divine commands ; the second, 

 the order of Powers, moves the heavens, sun, moon, planets, and 

 stars, opens and shuts the " windows of heaven," and brings to 

 pass all other celestial phenomona ; the third, the order of Em- 

 pire, guards the others. 



The third and lowest hierarchy is also made up of three 

 orders. First of these are the Principalities — the guardian spirits 

 of nations and kingdoms : next come Archangels ; these protect 

 religion, and bear the prayers of the saints to the foot of God's 

 throne : finally, come Angels ; these care for earthly affairs in 

 general — one being appointed to each mortal, and others taking 

 charge of the qualities of plants, metals, stones, and the like. 

 Throughout the whole system, from the great Triune God to 

 the lowest group of angels, we see at work the mystic power 

 attached to the triangle and sacred number three — the same 

 which gave the triune idea to ancient Hindoo theology, which 

 developed the triune deities in Egypt, and which transmitted this 

 theological gift to the Christian world, especially through the 

 Egyptian monk Athanasius. 



Below the earth is hell. This is tenanted by the angels who 

 rebelled under the lead of Lucifer^ prince of the seraphim — the 

 former favorite of the Trinity ; but of these rebellious angels, 

 some still rove among the planetary spheres, and give trouble to 

 the good angels ; others pervade the atmosphere about the earth — 

 carrying lightning, storm, drought, and hail. Others infest earth- 

 ly society, tempting men to sin; but Peter Lombard and St. 

 Thomas Aquinas take pains to show that the work of these devils 

 is, after all, but to discipline man or to mete out deserved punish- 

 ment. 



All this vast scheme had been so knit into the Ptolemaic view 

 and interwoven with it by the use of biblical texts and theological 

 reasonings that the resultant system of the universe was consid- 

 ered impregnable and final. To attack it was blasphemy. 



This system stood for centuries. Great theological scientists 

 in following ages, like Vincent de Beauvais and Cardinal d'Ailly, 

 devoted themselves to showing not only that it was supported by 

 Scripture, but that it supported Scripture. Thus was the geocen- 

 tric theory imbedded in the beliefs and aspirations, in the hopes 

 and fears, of Christendom down to the middle of the sixteenth 

 century.* 



* For the earlier sacred cosmology of Cosmas, with citations from Montfati^on, see my 

 chapter on Geography. For the views of the mcdiasval theologians, see foregoing notes in 

 this chapter. For the passages of Scripture on which the theological part of this structure 

 was developed, see especially Romans viii, 38 ; Ephesians i, 21 ; Colossians i, 16, and ii, 15 ; 

 and innumerable passages in the Old Testament. As to the music of the spheres, see 

 Dean Plumptre's Dante, vol. ii, p. 4, note. For an admirable summing up of the mediaeval 



