72 THEOLOGIANS AND NATURAL PHILOSOPHERS. 



visible ones, latent and becoming active only under 

 certain conditions of combination and temperature. 

 It is these which produce plants and animals in 

 great numbers without any co-operation of existing 

 organisms. Augustine thus sought a naturalistic 

 interpretation of the Mosaic record, or potential 

 rather than special creation, and taught that in 

 the institution of Nature we should not look 

 for miracles but for the law^s of Nature. As 

 Moore says : " Augustine distinctly rejected Special 

 Creation in favour of a doctrine which, without any 

 violence to language, we may call a theory of 

 Evolution." 



Cotterill traces the history of Augustine's thought 

 upon Genesis. At first he found almost insuper- 

 able difficulties in the literal, as contrasted with the 

 allegorical, interpretation. It seems that the account 

 of Creation was a favourite subject of ridicule with 

 the Manichaeans, who denied the inspiration of the 

 Old Testament. Thus the outcome of Augustine's 

 studies was a volume entitled De Geiiesi contra 

 ManichcEOS. 



Augustine took a sound philosophical position 

 upon natural causation, and after considering the 

 question of time, and saying that we ought not to 

 think of the six days of the Creation as being 

 equivalent to these solar days of ours, nor of the 

 working of God itself as God now works anything 

 in time, but rather as He has worked from Whom 

 time itself had its beginning. In explaining the 



