410 BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS 
accepted. “The truth is that all classes of theologians 
departed from the original philosophical and scientific stand- 
ards of some of the Fathers of the Church, and that special 
creation became the universal teaching from the middle of 
the sixteenth to the middle of the nineteenth centuries.” 
The Doctrine of Special Creation.—About the seven- 
teenth century a change came about which was largely owing 
to the writings and influence of a Spanish theologian named 
Suarez (1548-1617). Although Suarez is not the sole 
founder of this conception, it is certain, as Huxley has shown, 
that he engaged himself with the questions raised by the Bib- 
lical account of creation; and, furthermore, that he opposed 
the vicws that had been expressed by Augustine. In his 
tract upon the work of the six days (Tractatus de opere sex 
dierum) he takes exception to the views expressed by St. 
Augustine; he insisted that in the Scriptural account of 
creation a day of twenty-four hours was meant, and in all 
other cases he insists upon a literal interpretation of the 
Scriptures. Thus he introduced into theological thought the 
doctrine which goes under the name of special creation. 
The interesting feature in all this is that from the time of 
St. Augustine, in the fifth century, to the time when the ideas 
of Suarez began to prevail, in the seventeenth, there had been 
a harmonious rclation between some of the leading theolo- 
gians and scientific men in their outlook upon creation. 
The opinion of Augustine and other theologians was 
largely owing to the influence of Aristotle. ‘We know,” 
says Osborn, “that Greek philosophy tinctured early Chris- 
tian theology; what is not so generally realized is that the 
Aristotclian notion of the development of life led to the true 
interpretation of the Mosaic account of the creation. 
“There was in fact a long Greek period in the history 
of the evolutionary idea extending among the Fathers of the 
Church and later among some of the schoolmen, in their 
