43 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



with the first of the two accounts in Genesis, was sanctioned by 

 Bossuet. In his universal history he declared, " Moses teaches 

 us that this Potent Architect wished to create the universe in six 

 days to show that he did not act under necessity or blind impetu- 

 osity, as certain philosophers imagine/' * 



The early reformers accepted and developed the same view, 

 and Luther especially showed himself equal to the occasion. 

 With his usual boldness he declared, first, that Moses " spoke 

 properly and plainly, and neither allegorically nor figuratively," 

 and that therefore " the world with all creatures was created in 

 six days/' And then he goes on to show how, by a great miracle, 

 the whole creation was also instantaneous. 



Melanchthon also insisted that the universe was created out of 

 nothing and in a mysterious way, both in an instant and in six 

 days, citing the text : " He spake, and they were made ; he com- 

 manded, and they were created." 



Calvin opposed the idea of an instantaneous creation, and laid 

 especial stress on the creation in six days ; having called attention 

 to the fact that the biblical chronology shows the world to be not 

 quite six thousand years old and that it is now near its end, he 

 says that " creation was extended through six days that it might 

 not be tedious for us to occupy the whole of life in the considera- 

 tion of it." 



Peter Martyr clinched the matter by declaring : " So impor- 

 tant is it to comprehend the work of creation in the faith that we 

 see the creed of the Church take this as its starting point. Were 

 this article taken away there would be no original sin, the prom- 

 ise of Christ would become void, and all the vital force of our 

 religion would be destroyed." The Westminster divines in draw- 

 ing up their Confession of Faith specially laid it down as neces- 

 sary to believe that all things visible and invisible were created 

 not only out of nothing but in exactly six days. 



Nor were the Roman divines less strenuous than the Protes- 

 tant reformers regarding the necessity of holding closely to the 

 so-called Mosaic account of creation. As late as the middle of 



* For Philo Judseus, see his The Creation of the World, chap, iii ; for St. Augustine on 

 the powers of numbers in creation, see his De Genesi ad Litteram, iv, ch. ii ; for Peter Lom- 

 bard, see the Sententiae, lib. ii, dist. xv, 5 ; and for Hugo of St. Victor, see De Sacramentis, 

 lib. i, pars i ; also, Annotat. Elucidat. in Pentateuchum, cap. v, vi, vii ; for St. Hilary, see 

 De Trinitate, lib. xii ; for St. Thomas Aquinas, see his Summa Theologica, quest. Ixxxiv, art. 

 i and ii ; the passage in the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493, is in fol. iii ; for Bossuet, see his 

 Discours sur FHistoire TJniverselle ; for the sacredness of the number seven among the 

 Babylonians, see especially Schrader, Die Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament, pp. 21, 22 ; 

 also George Smith et al. ; for general ideas on the occult powers of various numbers, espe- 

 cially the number seven, and the influence of these ideas on theology and science, see my 

 chapter on astronomy. 



