NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 725 



In the twelfth century this view was incorporated by Peter 

 Lombard into his great theological work of the Sentences, which 

 became the text-book of theology through the middle ages. He 

 affirmed that " no created things would have been hurtful to man 

 had he not sinned ; they became hurtful for the sake of terrifying 

 and punishing vice or of proving and perfecting virtue; they 

 were created harmless, and on account of sin became hurtful." 



This theological theory regarding animals was brought out 

 in the eighteenth century with great force by John Wesley. He 

 declared that before Adam's sin "none of these attempted to 

 devour or in any wise hurt one another"; "the spider was as 

 harmless as the fly, and did not lie in wait for blood." Not only 

 Wesley, but the eminent Dr. Adam Clarke and Dr. Richard Wat- 

 son, whose ideas had the very greatest weight among the English 

 Dissenters, and even among leading thinkers in the Established 

 Church, held firmly to this theory. Not until, in our own time, 

 geology revealed the remains of vast multitudes of carnivorous 

 creatures, many of them with half-digested remains of other 

 creatures in their stomachs, all extinct long ages before the ap- 

 pearance of man upon earth, was a victory won by science over 

 theology in this field. 



A curious development of this doctrine was seen in the belief 

 drawn by sundry old commentators from the condemnation of the 

 serpent in Genesis a belief, indeed, perfectly natural, since it was 

 evidently that of the original writers of the account preserved in 

 the first of our sacred books. This belief was that, until the 

 tempting serpent was cursed by the Almighty, all serpents stood 

 erect, walked, and talked. 



This belief was handed down the ages as part of " the sacred 

 deposit of the faith " until Watson, the most prolific writer of the 

 great evangelical reform in the eighteenth century and the stand- 

 ard theologian of the evangelical party, declared : " We have no 

 reason at all to believe that the animal had a serpentine form in 

 any mode or degree until its transformation ; that he was then 

 degraded to a reptile to go upon his belly imports, on the con- 

 trary, an entire loss and alteration of the original form." Here, 

 again, was a ripe result of the theologic method diligently pur- 

 sued by the strongest thinkers in the Church during nearly two 

 thousand years ; but this " sacred deposit " also faded away when 

 the geologists found abundant remains of fossil serpents dating 

 from periods long before the appearance of man. 



Yet more troublesome questions arose among theologians re- 

 garding animals classed as "superfluous." St. Augustine was 

 especially exercised thereby. He says : " I confess I am ignorant 

 why mice and frogs were created, or flies and worms. . . . All 

 creatures are either useful, hurtful, or superfluous to us. ... As 



