322 VOLUTION AND DOGMA. 



with productive power, but this power was com- 

 municated to them by God." " From slime and 

 muddy places, frogs, flies and gnats came into being," 

 he was willing to admit, "but this was in virtue of a 

 certain germinative force conferred on matter by the 

 Author of nature." "Certain very small animals 

 may not have been created on the fifth and sixth 

 days," opines St. Augustine, " but may have orig- 

 inated later from putrefying matter," but still, even 

 in this case, God it is who is their Creator. 



Spontaneous generation, therefore, was never a 

 stumbling block either to the Fathers or Scholastics, 

 because the Creative act was always acknowledged, 

 and because God was ever recognized as the Author, 

 at least through second agents, of the divers forms of 

 life which were supposed to originate from inorganized 

 matter. Whether He created all things absolutely 

 and directly, or mediately and indirectly, it mattered 

 not, so long as it was understood that nothing could 

 exist without His will and cooperation. Whether, 

 then, the germ of life was specially created for each 

 individual creature, or whether matter was endowed 

 with the power of evolving what we call life, by the 

 proper collocation of the atoms and molecules of 

 which matter is constituted, was, from their point of 

 view, immaterial, so far as dogma was concerned. 

 The doctrine of spontaneous generation might be an 

 error, scientifically, but, even if so, there was nothing 

 in it contrary to the truths of revelation. It was 

 always and fully recognized that God was the sole 

 and absolute Creator of matter, and that He, by the 

 action of powers conferred on matter, by certain 



