THE RENASCENCE OF SCIENCE. 



103 



But La Peyrere became a Roman Catholic, and, of 

 course, recanted his opinions. Then, nearer the time 

 when controversy on the historical character of the 

 Scriptures was becoming active, one Astruc,a French 

 physician, suggested, in a work published in 1753, 

 that Moses may have used older materials in his 

 compilation of the earlier parts of the Pentateuch. 



But, practically, the five books included under 

 that name, were believed to have been written by 

 Moses under divine authority. The statement in 

 Genesis that God made the universe and its contents, 

 both living and non-living, in six days of twenty- 

 four hours each, was explicit. Thus interpreted, as 

 their plain meaning warranted, Archbishop Usher 

 made his famous calculation as to the time elapsing 

 between the creation and the birth of Christ. Dr. 

 White, in his important Warfare of Science with 

 Theology, gives an amusing example of the applica- 

 tion of Usher's method in detail. A seventeenth 

 century divine, Dr. Lightfoot, Vice- Chancellor of 

 Cambridge University, computed that " man was 

 created by the Trinity on 23d October, 4004 B.C., 

 at nine oclock in the morning." The same theo- 

 logian, who, by^the way, was a very eminent Hebrew 

 scholar, following the interpretation of the great 

 Fathers of the Church, " declared, as the result of 

 profound and exhaustive study of the Scriptures, 

 that ' heaven and earth, centre and circumference, 

 and clouds full of water, were created all together, 

 in the same instant.' " 



