232 CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [r. 



These passages leave no doubt that this great doctor 

 of the Catholic Church, of unchallenged authority and 

 unspotted orthodoxy, not only declares it to be Catholic 

 doctrine that the work of creation took place in the 

 space of six natural days ; but that he warmly repu- 

 diates, as inconsistent with our knowledge of the Divine 

 attributes, the supposition that the language which 

 Catholic faith requires the believer, to hold that God 

 inspired, was used in any other sense than that which 

 He knew it would convey to the minds of those to whom 

 it was addressed. 



And I think that in this repudiation Father Suarez 

 will have the sympathy of every man of common 

 uprightness, to whom it is certainly "incredible " that 

 the Almighty should have acted in a manner which He 

 would esteem dishonest and base in a man. 



But the belief that the universe was created in six 

 natural days is hopelessly inconsistent with the doctrine 

 of evolution, in so far as it applies to the stars and 

 planetary bodies ; and it can be made to agree with a 

 belief in the evolution of living beings only by the 

 supposition that the plants and animals, which are said 

 to have been created on the third, fifth, and six days, 

 were merely the primordial forms, or rudiments, out of 

 which existing plants and animals have been evolved ; so 

 that, on these days, plants and animals were not created 

 actually, but only potentially. 



The latter view is that held by Mr. Mivart, who follows 

 St. Augustin, and implies that he has the sanction of 

 Suarez. But, in point of fact, the latter great light of 

 orthodoxy takes no small pains to give the most explicit 

 and direct contradiction to all such imaginations, as the 

 following passages prove. In the first place, as regards 

 plants, Suarez discusses the problem : 



