136 MR. DARWIN'S CRITICS vv 
has devoted a separate treatise of considerable 
bulk to the discussion of all the problems which 
arise out of the account of the Creation which is — 
given in the Book of Genesis. And it is a 
matter of wonderment to me that Mr. Mivart, 
who somewhat sharply reproves “ Mr. Darwin and 
others” for not acquainting themselves with the 
true teachings of his Church, should allow 
himself to be indebted to a heretic like myself 
for a knowledge of the existence of that “ Trac- 
tatus de opere sex Dierum,”? in which the learned 
Father, of whom he justly speaks, as “an ~ 
authority widely venerated, and whose orthodoxy 
has never been questioned,” directly opposes all 
those opinions for which Mr. Mivart claims the 
shelter of his authority. 
In the tenth and eleventh chapters of the first 
book of this treatise, Suarez inquires in what sense ~ 
the word “day,” as employed in the first chapter 
of Genesis, is to be taken. He discusses the 
views of Philo and of Augustin on this question, 
and rejects them. He suggests that the approval 
of their allegorising interpretations by St. Thomas 
Aquinas, merely arose out of St. Thomas's 
modesty, and his desire not. to seem openly to 
controvert St. Augustin—“ voluisse Divus Thomas 
1 Tractatus de opere sex Dierum, scu de Universi Creatione, 
quatenus sex diebus perfecta esse, in libro Genesis cap. i. refertur, 
et prescrtim de productione hominis in statu innocentia. Ed. 
Birckmann, 1622. 
