THE true position of the earth in the universe was established only after a long and severe conflict. The Church used whatever power she had, even to the infliction of death, for sustaining her ideas. But it was in vain. The evidence in behalf of the Copernican theory became irresistible. It was at length universally admitted that the sun is the central, the ruling body of our system; the earth only one, and by no means the largest, of a family of encircling planets. Taught by the issue of that dispute, when the question of the age of the world presented itself for consideration, the Church did not exhibit the active resistance she had displayed on the former occasion. For, though her traditions were again put in jeopardy, they were not, in her judgment, so vitally assailed. To dethrone the Earth from her dominating position was, so the spiritual authorities declared, to undermine the very foundation of revealed truth; but discussions respecting the date of creation might within certain limits be permitted. Those limits were, however, very quickly overpassed, and thus the controversy became as dangerous as the former one had been.
It was not possible to adopt the advice given by Plato in his "Timaeus," when treating of this subject—the origin of the universe: "It is proper that both I who speak and you who judge should remember that we are but men, and therefore, receiving the probable mythological tradition, it is meet that we inquire no further into it." Since the time of St. Augustine the Scriptures had been made the great and final authority in all matters of science, and theologians had deduced from them schemes of chronology and cosmogony which had proved to be stumbling-blocks to the advance of real knowledge.
It is not necessary for us to do more than to allude to some of the leading features of these schemes; their peculiarities will be easily discerned with sufficient clearness. Thus, from the six days of creation and the Sabbath-day of rest, since we are told that a day is with the Lord as a thousand years, it was inferred that the duration of the world will be through six thousand years of suffering, and an additional thousand, a millennium of rest. It was generally admitted that the earth was about four thousand years old at the birth of Christ, but, so careless had Europe been in the study of its annals, that not Until A.D. 627 had it a proper chronology of its own. A Roman abbot, Dionysius Exiguus, or Dennis the Less, then fixed the vulgar era, and gave Europe its present Christian chronology.
The method followed in obtaining the earliest chronological dates was by computations, mainly founded on the lives of the patriarchs. Much difficulty was encountered in reconciling numerical discrepancies. Even if, as was taken for granted in those uncritical ages, Moses was the author of the books imputed to him, due weight was not given to the fact that he related events, many of which took place more than two thousand years before he was born. It scarcely seemed necessary to regard the Pentateuch as of plenary inspiration, since no means had been provided to perpetuate its correctness. The different copies which had escaped the chances of time varied very much; thus the Samaritan made thirteen hundred and seven years from the Creation to the Deluge, the Hebrew sixteen hundred and fifty-six, the Septuagint twenty-two hundred and sixty-three. The Septuagint counted fifteen hundred years more from the Creation to Abraham than the Hebrew. In general, however, there was an inclination to the supposition that the Deluge took place about two thousand years after the Creation, and, after another interval of two thousand years, Christ was born. Persons who had given much attention to the subject affirmed that there were not less than one hundred and thirty-two different opinions as to the year in which the Messiah appeared, and hence they declared that it was inexpedient to press for acceptance the Scriptural numbers too closely, since it was plain, from the great differences in different copies, that there had been no providential intervention to perpetuate a correct reading, nor was there any mark by which men could be guided to the only authentic version. Even those held in the highest esteem contained undeniable errors. Thus the Septuagint made Methuselah live until after the Deluge.
It was thought that, in the antediluvian world, the year consisted of three hundred and sixty days. Some even affirmed that this was the origin of the division of the circle into three hundred and sixty degrees. At the time of the Deluge, so many theologians declared, the motion of the sun was altered, and the year became five days and six hours longer. There was a prevalent opinion that that stupendous event occurred on November 2d, in the year of the world 1656. Dr. Whiston, however, disposed to greater precision, inclined to postpone it to November 28th. Some thought that the rainbow was not seen until after the flood; others, apparently with better reason, inferred that it was then first established as a sign. On coming forth from the ark, men received permission to use flesh as food, the antediluvians having been herbivorous! It would seem that the Deluge had not occasioned any great geographical changes, for Noah, relying on his antediluvian knowledge, proceeded to divide the earth among his three sons, giving to Japhet Europe, to Shem Asia, to Ham Africa. No provision was made for America, as he did not know of its existence. These patriarchs, undeterred by the terrible solitudes to which they were going, by the undrained swamps and untracked forests, journeyed to their allotted possessions, and commenced the settlement of the continents.
In seventy years the Asiatic family had increased to several hundred. They had found their way to the plains of Mesopotamia, and there, for some motive that we cannot divine, began building a tower "whose top might reach to heaven." Eusebius informs us that the work continued for forty years. They did not abandon it until a miraculous confusion of their language took place and dispersed them all over the earth. St. Ambrose shows that this confusion could not have been brought about by men. Origen believes that not even the angels accomplished it.
The confusion of tongues has given rise to many curious speculations among divines as to the primitive speech of man. Some have thought that the language of Adam consisted altogether of nouns, that they were monosyllables, and that the confusion was occasioned by the introduction of polysyllables. But these learned men must surely have overlooked the numerous conversations reported in Genesis, such as those between the Almighty and Adam, the serpent and Eve, etc. In these all the various parts of speech occur. There was, however, a coincidence of opinion that the primitive language was Hebrew. On the general principles of patristicism, it was fitting that this should be the case.
The Greek Fathers computed that, at the time of the dispersion, seventy-two nations were formed, and in this conclusion St. Augustine coincides. But difficulties seem to have been recognized in these computations; thus the learned Dr. Shuckford, who has treated very elaborately on all the foregoing points in his excellent work "On the Sacred and Profane History of the World connected," demonstrates that there could not have been more than twenty-one or twenty-two men, women, and children, in each of those kingdoms.
A very vital point in this system of chronological computation, based upon the ages of the patriarchs, was the great length of life to which those worthies attained. It was generally supposed that before the Flood "there was a perpetual equinox," and no vicissitudes in Nature. After that event the standard of life diminished one-half, and in the time of the Psalmist it had sunk to seventy years, at which it still remains. Austerities of climate were affirmed to have arisen through the shifting of the earth's axis at the Flood, and to this ill effect were added the noxious influences of that universal catastrophe, which, "converting the surface of the earth into a vast swamp, gave rise to fermentations of the blood and a weakening of the fibres."
With a view of avoiding difficulties arising from the extraordinary length of the patriarchal lives, certain divines suggested that the years spoken of by the sacred penman were not ordinary but lunar years. This, though it might bring the age of those venerable men within the recent term of life, introduced, however, another insuperable difficulty, since it made them have children when only five or six years old.
Sacred science, as interpreted by the Fathers of the Church, demonstrated these facts: 1. That the date of Creation was comparatively recent, not more than four or five thousand years before Christ; 2. That the act of Creation occupied the space of six ordinary days; 3. That the Deluge was universal, and that the animals which survived it were preserved in an ark; 4. That Adam was created perfect in morality and intelligence, that he fell, and that his descendants have shared in his sin and his fall.
Of these points and others that might be mentioned there were two on which ecclesiastical authority felt that it must insist. These were: 1. The recent date of Creation; for, the remoter that event, the more urgent the necessity of vindicating the justice of God, who apparently had left the majority of our race to its fate, and had reserved salvation for the few who were living in the closing ages of the world; 2. The perfect condition of Adam at his creation, since this was necessary to the theory of the fall, and the plan of salvation.
Theological authorities were therefore constrained to look with disfavor on any attempt to carry back the origin of the earth, to an epoch indefinitely remote, and on the Mohammedan theory of the evolution of man from lower forms, or his gradual development to his present condition in the long lapse of time.
From the puerilities, absurdities, and contradictions of the foregoing statement, we may gather how very unsatisfactory this so-called sacred science was. And perhaps we may be brought to the conclusion to which Dr. Shuckford, above quoted, was constrained to come, after his wearisome and unavailing attempt to coordinate its various parts: "As to the Fathers of the first ages of the Church, they were good men, but not men of universal learning."
Sacred cosmogony regards the formation and modeling of the earth as the direct act of God; it rejects the intervention of secondary causes in those events.
Scientific cosmogony dates from the telescopic discovery made by Cassini—an Italian astronomer, under whose care Louis XIV. placed the Observatory of Paris—that the planet Jupiter is not a sphere, but an oblate spheroid, flattened at the poles. Mechanical philosophy demonstrated that such a figure is the necessary result of the rotation of a yielding mass, and that the more rapid the rotation the greater the flattening, or, what comes to the same thing, the greater the equatorial bulging must be.
From considerations—purely of a mechanical kind—Newton had foreseen that such likewise, though to a less striking extent, must be the figure of the earth. To the protuberant mass is due the precession of the equinoxes, which requires twenty-five thousand eight hundred and sixty-eight years for its completion, and also the nutation of the earth's axis, discovered by Bradley. We have already had occasion to remark that the earth's equatorial diameter exceeds the polar by about twenty-six miles.
Two facts are revealed by the oblateness of the earth: 1. That she has formerly been in a yielding or plastic condition; 2. That she has been modeled by a mechanical and therefore a secondary cause.
But this influence of mechanical causes is manifested not only in the exterior configuration of the globe of the earth as a spheroid of revolution, it also plainly appears on an examination of the arrangement of her substance.
If we consider the aqueous rocks, their aggregate is many miles in thickness; yet they undeniably have been of slow deposit. The material of which they consist has been obtained by the disintegration of ancient lands; it has found its way into the water-courses, and by them been distributed anew. Effects of this kind, taking place before our eyes, require a very considerable lapse of time to produce a well-marked result—a water deposit may in this manner measure in thickness a few inches in a century—what, then, shall we say as to the time consumed in the formation of deposits of many thousand yards?
The position of the coast-line of Egypt has been known for much more than two thousand years. In that time it has made, by reason of the detritus brought down by the Nile, a distinctly-marked encroachment on the Mediterranean. But all Lower Egypt has had a similar origin. The coast-line near the mouth of the Mississippi has been well known for three hundred years, and during that time has scarcely made a perceptible advance on the Gulf of Mexico; but there was a time when the delta of that river was at St. Louis, more than seven hundred miles from its present position. In Egypt and in America—in fact, in all countries—the rivers have been inch by inch prolonging the land into the sea; the slowness of their work and the vastness of its extent satisfy us that we must concede for the operation enormous periods of time.
To the same conclusion we are brought if we consider the filling of lakes, the deposit of travertines, the denudation of hills, the cutting action of the sea on its shores, the undermining of cliffs, the weathering of rocks by atmospheric water and carbonic acid.
Sedimentary strata must have been originally deposited in planes nearly horizontal. Vast numbers of them have been forced, either by paroxysms at intervals or by gradual movement, into all manner of angular inclinations. Whatever explanations we may offer of these innumerable and immense tilts and fractures, they would seem to demand for their completion an inconceivable length of time.
The coal-bearing strata in Wales, by their gradual submergence, have attained a thickness of 12,000 feet; in Nova Scotia of 14,570 feet. So slow and so steady was this submergence, that erect trees stand one above another on successive levels; seventeen such repetitions may be counted in a thickness of 4,515 feet. The age of the trees is proved by their size, some being four feet in diameter. Round them, as they gradually went down with the subsiding soil, calamites grew, at one level after another. In the Sydney coal-field fifty-nine fossil forests occur in superposition.
Marine shells, found on mountain-tops far in the interior of continents, were regarded by theological writers as an indisputable illustration of the Deluge. But when, as geological studies became more exact, it was proved that in the crust of the earth vast fresh-water formations are repeatedly intercalated with vast marine ones, like the leaves of a book, it became evident that no single cataclysm was sufficient to account for such results; that the same region, through gradual variations of its level and changes in its topographical surroundings, had sometimes been dry land, sometimes covered with fresh and sometimes with sea water. It became evident also that, for the completion of these changes, tens of thousands of years were required.
To this evidence of a remote origin of the earth, derived from the vast superficial extent, the enormous thickness, and the varied characters of its strata, was added an imposing body of proof depending on its fossil remains. The relative ages of formations having been ascertained, it was shown that there has been an advancing physiological progression of organic forms, both vegetable and animal, from the oldest to the most recent; that those which inhabit the surface in our times are but an insignificant fraction of the prodigious multitude that have inhabited it heretofore; that for each species now living there are thousands that have become extinct. Though special formations are so strikingly characterized by some predominating type of life as to justify such expressions as the age of mollusks, the age of reptiles, the age of mammals, the introduction of the new-comers did not take place abruptly. as by sudden creation. They gradually emerged in an antecedent age, reached their culmination in the one which they characterize, and then gradually died out in a succeeding. There is no such thing as a sudden creation, a sudden strange appearance—but there is a slow metamorphosis, a slow development from a preexisting form. Here again we encounter the necessity of admitting for such results long periods of time. Within the range of history no well-marked instance of such development has been witnessed, and we speak with hesitation of doubtful instances of extinction. Yet in geological times myriads of evolutions and extinctions have occurred.
Since thus, within the experience of man, no case of metamorphosis or development has been observed, some have been disposed to deny its possibility altogether, affirming that all the different species have come into existence by separate creative acts. But surely it is less unphilosophical to suppose that each species has been evolved from a predecessor by a modification of its parts, than that it has suddenly started into existence out of nothing. Nor is there much weight in the remark that no man has ever witnessed such a transformation taking place. Let it be remembered that no man has ever witnessed an act of creation, the sudden appearance of an organic form, without any progenitor.
Abrupt, arbitrary, disconnected creative acts may serve to illustrate the Divine power; but that continuous unbroken chain of organisms which extends from palaeozoic formations to the formations of recent times, a chain in which each link hangs on a preceding and sustains a succeeding one, demonstrates to us not only that the production of animated beings is governed by law, but that it is by law that has undergone no change. In its operation, through myriads of ages, there has been no variation, no suspension.
The foregoing paragraphs may serve to indicate the character of a portion of the evidence with which we must deal in considering the problem of the age of the earth. Through the unintermitting labors of geologists, so immense a mass has been accumulated, that many volumes would be required to contain the details. It is drawn from the phenomena presented by all kinds of rocks, aqueous, igneous, metamorphic. Of aqueous rocks it investigates the thickness, the inclined positions, and how they rest unconformably on one another; how those that are of fresh-water origin are intercalated with those that are marine; how vast masses of material have been removed by slow-acting causes of denudation, and extensive geographical surfaces have been remodeled; how continents have undergone movements of elevation and depression, their shores sunk under the ocean, or sea-beaches and sea-cliffs carried far into the interior. It considers the zoological and botanical facts, the fauna and flora of the successive ages, and how in an orderly manner the chain of organic forms, plants, and animals, has been extended, from its dim and doubtful beginnings to our own times. From facts presented by the deposits of coal-coal which, in all its varieties, has originated from the decay of plants—it not only demon strates the changes that have taken place in the earth's atmosphere, but also universal changes of climate. From other facts it proves that there have been oscillations of temperature, periods in which the mean heat has risen, and periods in which the polar ices and snows have covered large portions of the existing continents—glacial periods, as they are termed.
One school of geologists, resting its argument on very imposing evidence, teaches that the whole mass of the earth, from being in a molten, or perhaps a vaporous condition, has cooled by radiation in the lapse of millions of ages, until it has reached its present equilibrium of temperature. Astronomical observations give great weight to this interpretation, especially so far as the planetary bodies of the solar system are concerned. It is also supported by such facts as the small mean density of the earth, the increasing temperature at increasing depths, the phenomena of volcanoes and injected veins, and those of igneous and metamorphic rocks. To satisfy the physical changes which this school of geologists contemplates, myriads of centuries are required.
But, with the views that the adoption of the Copernican system has given us, it is plain that we cannot consider the origin and biography of the earth in an isolated way; we must include with her all the other members of the system or family to which she belongs. Nay, more, we cannot restrict ourselves to the solar system; we must embrace in our discussions the starry worlds. And, since we have become familiarized with their almost immeasurable distances from one another, we are prepared to accept for their origin an immeasurably remote time. There are stars so far off that their light, fast as it travels, has taken thousands of years to reach us, and hence they must have been in existence many thousands of years ago.
Geologists having unanimously agreed—for perhaps there is not a single dissenting voice—that the chronology of the earth must be greatly extended, attempts have been made to give precision to it. Some of these have been based on astronomical, some on physical principles. Thus calculations founded on the known changes of the eccentricity of the earth's orbit, with a view of determining the lapse of time since the beginning of the last glacial period, have given two hundred and forty thousand years. Though the general postulate of the immensity of geological times may be conceded, such calculations are on too uncertain a theoretical basis to furnish incontestable results.
But, considering the whole subject from the present scientific stand-point, it is very clear that the views presented by theological writers, as derived from the Mosaic record, cannot be admitted. Attempts have been repeatedly made to reconcile the revealed with the discovered facts, but they have proved to be unsatisfactory. The Mosaic time is too short, the order of creation incorrect, the divine interventions too anthropomorphic; and, though the presentment of the subject is in harmony with the ideas that men have entertained, when first their minds were turned to the acquisition of natural knowledge, it is not in accordance with their present conceptions of the insignificance of the earth and the grandeur of the universe.
Among late geological discoveries is one of special interest; it is the detection of human remains and human works in formations which, though geologically recent, are historically very remote.
The fossil remains of men, with rude implements of rough or chipped flint, of polished stone, of bone, of bronze, are found in Europe in caves, in drifts, in peat-beds. They indicate a savage life, spent in hunting and fishing. Recent researches give reason to believe that, under low and base grades, the existence of man can be traced back into the tertiary times. He was contemporary with the southern elephant, the rhinoceros leptorhinus, the great hippopotamus, perhaps even in the miocene contemporary with the mastodon.
At the close of the Tertiary period, from causes not yet determined, the Northern Hemisphere underwent a great depression of temperature. From a torrid it passed to a glacial condition. After a period of prodigious length, the temperature again rose, and the glaciers that had so extensively covered the surface receded. Once more there was a decline in the heat, and the glaciers again advanced, but this time not so far as formerly. This ushered in the Quaternary period, during which very slowly the temperature came to its present degree. The water deposits that were being made required thousands of centuries for their completion. At the beginning of the Quaternary period there were alive the cave-bear, the cave-lion, the amphibious hippopotamus, the rhinoceros with chambered nostrils, the mammoth. In fact, the mammoth swarmed. He delighted in a boreal climate. By degrees the reindeer, the horse, the ox, the bison, multiplied, and disputed with him his food. Partly for this reason, and partly because of the increasing heat, he became extinct. From middle Europe, also, the reindeer retired. His departure marks the end of the Quaternary period.
Since the advent of man on the earth, we have, therefore, to deal with periods of incalculable length. Vast changes in the climate and fauna were produced by the slow operation of causes such as are in action at the present day. Figures cannot enable us to appreciate these enormous lapses of time.
It seems to be satisfactorily established, that a race allied to the Basques may be traced back to the Neolithic age. At that time the British Islands were undergoing a change of level, like that at present occurring in the Scandinavian Peninsula. Scotland was rising, England was sinking. In the Pleistocene age there existed in Central Europe a rude race of hunters and fishers closely allied to the Esquimaux.
In the old glacial drift of Scotland the relics of man are found along with those of the fossil elephant. This carries us back to that time above referred to, when a large portion of Europe was covered with ice, which had edged down from the polar regions to southerly latitudes, and, as glaciers, descended from the summits of the mountain-chains into the plains. Countless species of animals perished in this cataclysm of ice and snow, but man survived.
In his primitive savage condition, living for the most part on fruits, roots, shell-fish, man was in possession of a fact which was certain eventually to insure his civilization. He knew how to make a fire. In peat-beds, under the remains of trees that in those localities have long ago become extinct, his relics are still found, the implements that accompany him indicating a distinct chronological order. Near the surface are those of bronze, lower down those of bone or horn, still lower those of polished stone, and beneath all those of chipped or rough stone. The date of the origin of some of these beds cannot be estimated at less than forty or fifty thousand years.
The caves that have been examined in France and elsewhere have furnished for the Stone age axes, knives, lance and arrow points, scrapers, hammers. The change from what may be termed the chipped to the polished stone period is very gradual. It coincides with the domestication of the dog, an epoch in hunting-life. It embraces thousands of centuries. The appearance of arrow-heads indicates the invention of the bow, and the rise of man from a defensive to an offensive mode of life. The introduction of barbed arrows shows how inventive talent was displaying itself; bone and horn tips, that the huntsman was including smaller animals, and perhaps birds, in his chase; bone whistles, his companionship with other huntsmen or with his dog. The scraping-knives of flint indicate the use of skin for clothing, and rude bodkins and needles its manufacture. Shells perforated for bracelets and necklaces prove how soon a taste for personal adornment was acquired; the implements necessary for the preparation of pigments suggest the painting of the body, and perhaps tattooing; and batons of rank bear witness to the beginning of a social organization.
With the utmost interest we look upon the first germs of art among these primitive men. They have left its rude sketches on pieces of ivory and flakes of bone, and carvings, of the animals contemporary with them. In these prehistoric delineations, sometimes not without spirit, we have mammoths, combats of reindeer. One presents us with a man harpooning a fish, another a hunting-scene of naked men armed with the dart. Man is the only animal who has the propensity of depicting external forms, and of availing himself of the use of fire.
Shell-mounds, consisting of bones and shells, some of which may be justly described as of vast extent, and of a date anterior to the Bronze age, and full of stone implements, bear in all their parts indications of the use of fire. These are often adjacent to the existing coasts sometimes, however, they are far inland, in certain instances as far as fifty miles. Their contents and position indicate for them a date posterior to that of the great extinct mammals, but prior to the domesticated. Some of these, it is said, cannot be less than one hundred thousand years old.
The lake-dwellings in Switzerland—huts built on piles or logs, wattled with boughs—were, as may be inferred from the accompanying implements, begun in the Stone age, and continued into that of Bronze. In the latter period the evidences become numerous of the adoption of an agricultural life.
It must not be supposed that the periods into which geologists have found it convenient to divide the progress of man in civilization are abrupt epochs, which hold good simultaneously for the whole human race. Thus the wandering Indians of America are only at the present moment emerging from the Stone age. They are still to be seen in many places armed with arrows, tipped with flakes of flint. It is but as yesterday that some have obtained, from the white man, iron, fire-arms, and the horse.
So far as investigations have gone, they indisputably refer the existence of man to a date remote from us by many hundreds of thousands of years. It must be borne in mind that these investigations are quite recent, and confined to a very limited geographical space. No researches have yet been made in those regions which might reasonably be regarded as the primitive habitat of man.
We are thus carried back immeasurably beyond the six thousand years of Patristic chronology. It is difficult to assign a shorter date for the last glaciation of Europe than a quarter of a million of years, and human existence antedates that. But not only is it this grand fact that confronts us, we have to admit also a primitive animalized state, and a slow, a gradual development. But this forlorn, this savage condition of humanity is in strong contrast to the paradisiacal happiness of the garden of Eden, and, what is far more serious, it is inconsistent with the theory of the Fall.
I have been induced to place the subject of this chapter out of its proper chronological order, for the sake of presenting what I had to say respecting the nature of the world more completely by itself. The discussions that arose as to the age of the earth were long after the conflict as to the criterion of truth—that is, after the Reformation; indeed, they were substantially included in the present century. They have been conducted with so much moderation as to justify the term I have used in the title of this chapter, "Controversy," rather than "Conflict." Geology has not had to encounter the vindictive opposition with which astronomy was assailed, and, though, on her part, she has insisted on a concession of great antiquity for the earth, she has herself pointed out the unreliability of all numerical estimates thus far offered. The attentive reader of this chapter cannot have failed to observe inconsistencies in the numbers quoted. Though wanting the merit of exactness, those numbers, however, justify the claim of vast antiquity, and draw us to the conclusion that the time-scale of the world answers to the space-scale in magnitude.
"WHAT is truth?" was the passionate demand of a Roman procurator on one of the most momentous occasions in history. And the Divine Person who stood before him, to whom the interrogation was addressed, made no reply—unless, indeed, silence contained the reply.
Often and vainly had that demand been made before—often and vainly has it been made since. No one has yet given a satisfactory answer.
When, at the dawn of science in Greece, the ancient religion was disappearing like a mist at sunrise, the pious and thoughtful men of that country were thrown into a condition of intellectual despair. Anaxagoras plaintively exclaims, "Nothing can be known, nothing can be learned, nothing can be certain, sense is limited, intellect is weak, life is short." Xenophanes tells us that it is impossible for us to be certain even when we utter the truth. Parmenides declares that the very constitution of man prevents him from ascertaining absolute truth. Empedocles affirms that all philosophical and religious systems must be unreliable, because we have no criterion by which to test them. Democritus asserts that even things that are true cannot impart certainty to us; that the final result of human inquiry is the discovery that man is incapable of absolute knowledge; that, even if the truth be in his possession, he cannot be certain of it. Pyrrho bids us reflect on the necessity of suspending our judgment of things, since we have no criterion of truth; so deep a distrust did he impart to his followers, that they were in the habit of saying, "We assert nothing; no, not even that we assert nothing." Epicurus taught his disciples that truth can never be determined by reason. Arcesilaus, denying both intellectual and sensuous knowledge, publicly avowed that he knew nothing, not even his own ignorance! The general conclusion to which Greek philosophy came was this—that, in view of the contradiction of the evidence of the senses, we cannot distinguish the true from the false; and such is the imperfection of reason, that we cannot affirm the correctness of any philosophical deduction.
It might be supposed that a revelation from God to man would come with such force and clearness as to settle all uncertainties and overwhelm all opposition. A Greek philosopher, less despairing than others, had ventured to affirm that the coexistence of two forms of faith, both claiming to be revealed by the omnipotent God, proves that neither of them is true. But let us remember that it is difficult for men to come to the same conclusion as regards even material and visible things, unless they stand at the same point of view. If discord and distrust were the condition of philosophy three hundred years before the birth of Christ, discord and distrust were the condition of religion three hundred years after his death. This is what Hilary, the Bishop of Poictiers, in his well-known passage written about the time of the Nicene Council, says:
"It is a thing equally deplorable and dangerous that there are, as many creeds as opinions among men, as many doctrines as inclinations, and as many sources of blasphemy as there are faults among us, because we make creeds arbitrarily and explain them as arbitrarily. Every year, nay, every moon, we make new creeds to describe invisible mysteries; we repent of what we have done; we defend those who repent; we anathematize those whom we defend; we condemn either the doctrines of others in ourselves, or our own in that of others; and, reciprocally tearing each other to pieces, we have been the cause of each other's ruin."
These are not mere words; but the import of this self-accusation can be realized fully only by such as are familiar with the ecclesiastical history of those times. As soon as the first fervor of Christianity as a system of benevolence had declined, dissensions appeared. Ecclesiastical historians assert that "as early as the second century began the contest between faith and reason, religion and philosophy, piety and genius." To compose these dissensions, to obtain some authoritative expression, some criterion of truth, assemblies for consultation were resorted to, which eventually took the form of councils. For a long time they had nothing more than an advisory authority; but, when, in the fourth century, Christianity had attained to imperial rule, their dictates became compulsory, being enforced by the civil power. By this the whole face of the Church was changed. Oecumenical councils—parliaments of Christianity—consisting of delegates from all the churches in the world, were summoned by the authority of the emperor; he presided either personally or nominally in them—composed all differences, and was, in fact, the Pope of Christendom. Mosheim, the historian, to whom I have more particularly referred above, speaking of these times, remarks that "there was nothing to exclude the ignorant from ecclesiastical preferment; the savage and illiterate party, who looked on all kinds of learning, particularly philosophy, as pernicious to piety, was increasing;" and, accordingly, "the disputes carried on in the Council of Nicea offered a remarkable example of the greatest ignorance and utter confusion of ideas, particularly in the language and explanations of those who approved of the decisions of that council." Vast as its influence has been, "the ancient critics are neither agreed concerning the time nor place in which it was assembled, the number of those who sat in it, nor the bishop who presided. No authentic acts of its famous sentence have been committed to writing, or, at least, none have been transmitted to our times." The Church had now become what, in the language of modern politicians, would be called "a confederated republic." The will of the council was determined by a majority vote, and, to secure that, all manner of intrigues and impositions were resorted to; the influence of court females, bribery, and violence, were not spared. The Council of Nicea had scarcely adjourned,—when it was plain to all impartial men that, as a method of establishing a criterion of truth in religious matters, such councils were a total failure. The minority had no rights which the majority need respect. The protest of many good men, that a mere majority vote given by delegates, whose right to vote had never been examined and authorized, could not be received as ascertaining absolute truth, was passed over with contempt, and the consequence was, that council was assembled against council, and their jarring and contradictory decrees spread perplexity and confusion throughout the Christian world. In the fourth century alone there were thirteen councils adverse to Arius, fifteen in his favor, and seventeen for the semi-Arians—in all, forty-five. Minorities were perpetually attempting to use the weapon which majorities had abused.
The impartial ecclesiastical historian above quoted, moreover, says that "two monstrous and calamitous errors were adopted in this fourth century: 1. That it was an act of virtue to deceive and lie when, by that means, the interests of the Church might be promoted. 2. That errors in religion, when maintained and adhered to after proper admonition, were punishable with civil penalties and corporal tortures."
Not without astonishment can we look back at what, in those times, were popularly regarded as criteria of truth. Doctrines were considered as established by the number of martyrs who had professed them, by miracles, by the confession of demons, of lunatics, or of persons possessed of evil spirits: thus, St. Ambrose, in his disputes with the Arians, produced men possessed by devils, who, on the approach of the relics of certain martyrs, acknowledged, with loud cries, that the Nicean doctrine of the three persons of the Godhead was true. But the Arians charged him with suborning these infernal witnesses with a weighty bribe. Already, ordeal tribunals were making their appearance. During the following six centuries they were held as a final resort for establishing guilt or innocence, under the forms of trial by cold water, by duel, by the fire, by the cross.
What an utter ignorance of the nature of evidence and its laws have we here! An accused man sinks or swims when thrown into a pond of water; he is burnt or escapes unharmed when he holds a piece of red-hot iron in his hand; a champion whom he has hired is vanquished or vanquishes in single fight; he can keep his arms outstretched like a cross, or fails to do so longer than his accuser, and his innocence or guilt of some imputed crime is established! Are these criteria of truth?
Is it surprising that all Europe was filled with imposture miracles during those ages?—miracles that are a disgrace to the common-sense of man!
But the inevitable day came at length. Assertions and doctrines based upon such preposterous evidence were involved in the discredit that fell upon the evidence itself. As the thirteenth century is approached, we find unbelief in all directions setting in. First, it is plainly seen among the monastic orders, then it spreads rapidly among the common people. Books, such as "The Everlasting Gospel," appear among the former; sects, such as the Catharists, Waldenses, Petrobrussians, arise among the latter. They agreed in this, "that the public and established religion was a motley system of errors and superstitions, and that the dominion which the pope had usurped over Christians was unlawful and tyrannical; that the claim put forth by Rome, that the Bishop of Rome is the supreme lord of the universe, and that neither princes nor bishops, civil governors nor ecclesiastical rulers, have any lawful power in church or state but what they receive from him, is utterly without foundation, and a usurpation of the rights of man."
To withstand this flood of impiety, the papal government established two institutions: 1. The Inquisition; 2. Auricular confession—the latter as a means of detection, the former as a tribunal for punishment.
In general terms, the commission of the Inquisition was, to extirpate religious dissent by terrorism, and surround heresy with the most horrible associations; this necessarily implied the power of determining what constitutes heresy. The criterion of truth was thus in possession of this tribunal, which was charged "to discover and bring to judgment heretics lurking in towns, houses, cellars, woods, caves, and fields." With such savage alacrity did it carry out its object of protecting the interests of religion, that between 1481 and 1808 it had punished three hundred and forty thousand persons, and of these nearly thirty-two thousand had been burnt! In its earlier days, when public opinion could find no means of protesting against its atrocities, "it often put to death, without appeal, on the very day that they were accused, nobles, clerks, monks, hermits, and lay persons of every rank." In whatever direction thoughtful men looked, the air was full of fearful shadows. No one could indulge in freedom of thought without expecting punishment. So dreadful were the proceedings of the Inquisition, that the exclamation of Pagliarici was the exclamation of thousands: "It is hardly possible for a man to be a Christian, and die in his bed."
The Inquisition destroyed the sectaries of Southern France in the thirteenth century. Its unscrupulous atrocities extirpated Protestantism in Italy and Spain. Nor did it confine itself to religious affairs; it engaged in the suppression of political discontent. Nicolas Eymeric, who was inquisitor-general of the kingdom of Aragon for nearly fifty years, and who died in 1399, has left a frightful statement of its conduct and appalling cruelties in his "Directorium Inquisitorum."
This disgrace of Christianity, and indeed of the human race, had different constitutions in different countries. The papal Inquisition continued the tyranny, and eventually superseded the old episcopal inquisitions. The authority of the bishops was unceremoniously put aside by the officers of the pope.
By the action of the fourth Lateran Council, A.D. 1215, the power of the Inquisition was frightfully increased, the necessity of private confession to a priest—auricular confession—being at that time formally established. This, so far as domestic life was concerned, gave omnipresence and omniscience to the Inquisition. Not a man was safe. In the hands of the priest, who, at the confessional, could extract or extort from them their most secret thoughts, his wife and his servants were turned into spies. Summoned before the dread tribunal, he was simply informed that he lay under strong suspicions of heresy. No accuser was named; but the thumb-screw, the stretching-rope, the boot and wedge, or other enginery of torture, soon supplied that defect, and, innocent or guilty, he accused himself!
Notwithstanding all this power, the Inquisition failed of its purpose. When the heretic could no longer confront it, he evaded it. A dismal disbelief stealthily pervaded all Europe,—a denial of Providence, of the immortality of the soul, of human free-will, and that man can possibly resist the absolute necessity, the destiny which envelops him. Ideas such as these were cherished in silence by multitudes of persons driven to them by the tyrannical acts of ecclesiasticism. In spite of persecution, the Waldenses still survived to propagate their declaration that the Roman Church, since Constantine, had degenerated from its purity and sanctity; to protest against the sale of indulgences, which they said had nearly abolished prayer, fasting, alms; to affirm that it was utterly useless to pray for the souls of the dead, since they must already have gone either to heaven or hell. Though it was generally believed that philosophy or science was pernicious to the interests of Christianity or true piety, the Mohammedan literature then prevailing in Spain was making converts among all classes of society. We see very plainly its influence in many of the sects that then arose; thus, "the Brethren and Sisters of the Free. Spirit" held that "the universe came by emanation from God, and would finally return to him by absorption; that rational souls are so many portions of the Supreme Deity; and that the universe, considered as one great whole, is God." These are ideas that can only be entertained in an advanced intellectual condition. Of this sect it is said that many suffered burning with unclouded serenity, with triumphant feelings of cheerfulness and joy. Their orthodox enemies accused them of gratifying their passions at midnight assemblages in darkened rooms, to which both sexes in a condition of nudity repaired. A similar accusation, as is well known, was brought against the primitive Christians by the fashionable society of Rome.
The influences of the Averroistic philosophy were apparent in many of these sects. That Mohammedan system, considered from a Christian point of view, led to the heretical belief that the end of the precepts of Christianity is the union of the soul with the Supreme Being; that God and Nature have the same relations to each other as the soul and the body; that there is but one individual intelligence; and that one soul performs all the spiritual and rational functions in all the human race. When, subsequently, toward the time of the Reformation, the Italian Averroists were required by the Inquisition to give an account of themselves, they attempted to show that there is a wide distinction between philosophical and religious truth; that things may be philosophically true, and yet theologically false—an exculpatory device condemned at length by the Lateran Council in the time of Leo X.
But, in spite of auricular confession, and the Inquisition, these heretical tendencies survived. It has been truly said that, at the epoch of the Reformation, there lay concealed, in many parts of Europe, persons who entertained the most virulent enmity against Christianity. In this pernicious class were many Aristotelians, such as Pomponatius; many philosophers and wits, such as Bodin, Rabelais, Montaigne; many Italians, as Leo X., Bembo, Bruno.
Miracle-evidence began to fall into discredit during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The sarcasms of the Hispano-Moorish philosophers had forcibly drawn the attention of many of the more enlightened ecclesiastics to its illusory nature. The discovery of the Pandects of Justinian, at Amalfi, in 1130, doubtless exerted a very powerful influence in promoting the study of Roman jurisprudence, and disseminating better notions as to the character of legal or philosophical evidence. Hallam has cast some doubt on the well-known story of this discovery, but he admits that the celebrated copy in the Laurentian library, at Florence, is the only one containing the entire fifty books. Twenty years subsequently, the monk Gratian collected together the various papal edicts, the canons of councils, the declarations of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, in a volume called "The Decretum," considered as the earliest authority in canon law. In the next century Gregory IX. published five books of Decretals, and Boniface VIII. subsequently added a sixth. To these followed the Clementine Constitutions, a seventh book of Decretals, and "A Book of Institutes," published together, by Gregory XIII., in 1580, under the title of "Corpus Juris Canonici." The canon law had gradually gained enormous power through the control it had obtained over wills, the guardianship of orphans, marriages, and divorces.
The rejection of miracle-evidence, and the substitution of legal evidence in its stead, accelerated the approach of the Reformation. No longer was it possible to admit the requirement which, in former days, Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his treatise, "Cur Deus Homo," had enforced, that we must first believe without examination, and may afterward endeavor to understand what we have thus believed. When Cajetan said to Luther, "Thou must believe that one single drop of Christ's blood is sufficient to redeem the whole human race, and the remaining quantity that was shed in the garden and on the cross was left as a legacy to the pope, to be a treasure from which indulgences were to be drawn," the soul of the sturdy German monk revolted against such a monstrous assertion, nor would he have believed it though a thousand miracles had been worked in its support. This shameful practice of selling indulgences for the commission of sin originated among the bishops, who, when they had need of money for their private pleasures, obtained it in that way. Abbots and monks, to whom this gainful commerce was denied, raised funds by carrying about relics in solemn procession, and charging a fee for touching them. The popes, in their pecuniary straits, perceiving how lucrative the practice might become, deprived the bishops of the right of making such sales, and appropriated it to themselves, establishing agencies, chiefly among the mendicant orders, for the traffic. Among these orders there was a sharp competition, each boasting of the superior value of its indulgences through its greater influence at the court of heaven, its familiar connection with the Virgin Mary and the saints in glory. Even against Luther himself, who had been an Augustinian monk, a calumny was circulated that he was first alienated from the Church by a traffic of this kind having been conferred on the Dominicans, instead of on his own order, at the time when Leo X. was raising funds by this means for building St. Peter's, at Rome, A.D. 1517. and there is reason to think that Leo himself, in the earlier stages of the Reformation, attached weight to that allegation.
Indulgences were thus the immediate inciting cause of the Reformation, but very soon there came into light the real principle that was animating the controversy. It lay in the question, Does the Bible owe its authenticity to the Church? or does the Church owe her authenticity to the Bible? Where is the criterion of truth?
It is not necessary for me here to relate the well known particulars of that controversy, the desolating wars and scenes of blood to which it gave rise: how Luther posted on the door of the cathedral of Wittemberg ninety-five theses, and was summoned to Rome to answer for his offense; how he appealed from the pope, ill-informed at the time, to the pope when he should have been better instructed; how he was condemned as a heretic, and thereupon appealed to a general council; how, through the disputes about purgatory, transubstantiation, auricular confession, absolution, the fundamental idea which lay at the bottom of the whole movement came into relief, the right of individual judgment; how Luther was now excommunicated, A.D. 1520, and in defiance burnt the bull of excommunication and the volumes of the canon law, which he denounced as aiming at the subversion of all civil government, and the exaltation of the papacy; how by this skillful manoeuvre he brought over many of the German princes to his views; how, summoned before the Imperial Diet at Worms, he refused to retract, and, while he was bidden in the castle of Wartburg, his doctrines were spreading, and a reformation under Zwingli broke out in Switzerland; how the principle of sectarian decomposition embedded in the movement gave rise to rivalries and dissensions between the Germans and the Swiss, and even divided the latter among themselves under the leadership of Zwingli and of Calvin; how the Conference of Marburg, the Diet of Spires, and that at Augsburg, failed to compose the troubles, and eventually the German Reformation assumed a political organization at Smalcalde. The quarrels between the Lutherans and the Calvinists gave hopes to Rome that she might recover her losses.
Leo was not slow to discern that the Lutheran Reformation was something more serious than a squabble among some monks about the profits of indulgence-sales, and the papacy set itself seriously at work to overcome the revolters. It instigated the frightful wars that for so many years desolated Europe, and left animosities which neither the Treaty of Westphalia, nor the Council of Trent after eighteen years of debate, could compose. No one can read without a shudder the attempts that were made to extend the Inquisition in foreign countries. All Europe, Catholic and Protestant, was horror-stricken at the Huguenot massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve (A.D. 1572). For perfidy and atrocity it has no equal in the annals of the world.
The desperate attempt in which the papacy had been engaged to put down its opponents by instigating civil wars, massacres, and assassinations, proved to be altogether abortive. Nor had the Council of Trent any better result. Ostensibly summoned to correct, illustrate, and fix with perspicacity the doctrine of the Church, to restore the vigor of its discipline, and to reform the lives of its ministers, it was so manipulated that a large majority of its members were Italians, and under the influence of the pope. Hence the Protestants could not possibly accept its decisions.
The issue of the Reformation was the acceptance by all the Protestant Churches of the dogma that the Bible is a sufficient guide for every Christian man. Tradition was rejected, and the right of private interpretation assured. It was thought that the criterion of truth had at length been obtained.
The authority thus imputed to the Scriptures was not restricted to matters of a purely religious or moral kind; it extended over philosophical facts and to the interpretation of Nature. Many went as far as in the old times Epiphanius had done: he believed that the Bible contained a complete system of mineralogy! The Reformers would tolerate no science that was not in accordance with Genesis. Among them there were many who maintained that religion and piety could never flourish unless separated from learning and science. The fatal maxim that the Bible contained the sum and substance of all knowledge, useful or possible to man—a maxim employed with such pernicious effect of old by Tertullian and by St. Augustine, and which had so often been enforced by papal authority—was still strictly insisted upon. The leaders of the Reformation, Luther and Melanchthon, were determined to banish philosophy from the Church. Luther declared that the study of Aristotle is wholly useless; his vilification of that Greek philosopher knew no bounds. He is, says Luther, "truly a devil, a horrid calumniator, a wicked sycophant, a prince of darkness, a real Apollyon, a beast, a most horrid impostor on mankind, one in whom there is scarcely any philosophy, a public and professed liar, a goat, a complete epicure, this twice execrable Aristotle." The schoolmen were, so Luther said, "locusts, caterpillars, frogs, lice." He entertained an abhorrence for them. These opinions, though not so emphatically expressed, were entertained by Calvin. So far as science is concerned, nothing is owed to the Reformation. The Procrustean bed of the Pentateuch was still before her.
In the annals of Christianity the most ill-omened day is that in which she separated herself from science. She compelled Origen, at that time (A.D. 231) its chief representative and supporter in the Church, to abandon his charge in Alexandria, and retire to Caesarea. In vain through many subsequent centuries did her leading men spend themselves in—as the phrase then went—"drawing forth the internal juice and marrow of the Scriptures for the explaining of things." Universal history from the third to the sixteenth century shows with what result. The dark ages owe their darkness to this fatal policy. Here and there, it is true, there were great men, such as Frederick II. and Alphonso X., who, standing at a very elevated and general point of view, had detected the value of learning to civilization, and, in the midst of the dreary prospect that ecclesiasticism had created around them, had recognized that science alone can improve the social condition of man.
The infliction of the death-punishment for difference of opinion was still resorted to. When Calvin caused Servetus to be burnt at Geneva, it was obvious to every one that the spirit of persecution was unimpaired. The offense of that philosopher lay in his belief. This was, that the genuine doctrines of Christianity had been lost even before the time of the Council of Nicea; that the Holy Ghost animates the whole system of Nature, like a soul of the world, and that, with the Christ, it will be absorbed, at the end of all things, into the substance of the Deity, from which they had emanated. For this he was roasted to death over a slow fire. Was there any distinction between this Protestant auto-da-fe and the Catholic one of Vanini, who was burnt at Toulouse, by the Inquisition, in 1629, for his "Dialogues concerning Nature?"
The invention of printing, the dissemination of books, had introduced a class of dangers which the persecution of the Inquisition could not reach. In 1559, Pope Paul IV. instituted the Congregation of the Index Expurgatorius. "Its duty is to examine books and manuscripts intended for publication, and to decide whether the people may be permitted to read them; to correct those books of which the errors are not numerous, and which contain certain useful and salutary truths, so as to bring them into harmony with the doctrines of the Church; to condemn those of which the principles are heretical and pernicious; and to grant the peculiar privilege of perusing heretical books to certain persons. This congregation, which is sometimes held in presence of the pope, but generally in the palace of the Cardinal-president, has a more extensive jurisdiction than that of the Inquisition, as it not only takes cognizance of those books that contain doctrines contrary to the Roman Catholic faith, but of those that concern the duties of morality, the discipline of the Church, the interests of society. Its name is derived from the alphabetical tables or indexes of heretical books and authors composed by its appointment."
The Index Expurgatorius of prohibited books at first indicated those works which it was unlawful to read; but, on this being found insufficient, whatever was not permitted was prohibited—an audacious attempt to prevent all knowledge, except such as suited the purposes of the Church, from reaching the people.
The two rival divisions of the Christian Church—Protestant and Catholic—were thus in accord on one point: to tolerate no science except such as they considered to be agreeable to the Scriptures. The Catholic, being in possession of centralized power, could make its decisions respected wherever its sway was acknowledged, and enforce the monitions of the Index Expurgatorius; the Protestant, whose influence was diffused among many foci in different nations, could not act in such a direct and resolute manner. Its mode of procedure was, by raising a theological odium against an offender, to put him under a social ban—a course perhaps not less effectual than the other.
As we have seen in former chapters, an antagonism between religion and science had existed from the earliest days of Christianity. On every occasion permitting its display it may be detected through successive centuries. We witness it in the downfall of the Alexandrian Museum, in the cases of Erigena and Wiclif, in the contemptuous rejection by the heretics of the thirteenth century of the Scriptural account of the Creation; but it was not until the epoch of Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, that the efforts of Science to burst from the thraldom in which she was fettered became uncontrollable. In all countries the political power of the Church had greatly declined; her leading men perceived that the cloudy foundation on which she had stood was dissolving away. Repressive measures against her antagonists, in old times resorted to with effect, could be no longer advantageously employed. To her interests the burning of a philosopher here and there did more harm than good. In her great conflict with astronomy, a conflict in which Galileo stands as the central figure, she received an utter overthrow; and, as we have seen, when the immortal work of Newton was printed, she could offer no resistance, though Leibnitz affirmed, in the face of Europe, that "Newton had robbed the Deity of some of his most excellent attributes, and had sapped the foundation of natural religion."
From the time of Newton to our own time, the divergence of science from the dogmas of the Church has continually increased. The Church declared that the earth is the central and most important body in the universe; that the sun and moon and stars are tributary to it. On these points she was worsted by astronomy. She affirmed that a universal deluge had covered the earth; that the only surviving animals were such as had been saved in an ark. In this her error was established by geology. She taught that there was a first man, who, some six or eight thousand years ago, was suddenly created or called into existence in a condition of physical and moral perfection, and from that condition he fell. But anthropology has shown that human beings existed far back in geological time, and in a savage state but little better than that of the brute.
Many good and well-meaning men have attempted to reconcile the statements of Genesis with the discoveries of science, but it is in vain. The divergence has increased so much, that it has become an absolute opposition. One of the antagonists must give way.
May we not, then, be permitted to examine the authenticity of this book, which, since the second century, has been put forth as the criterion of scientific truth? To maintain itself in a position so exalted, it must challenge human criticism.
In the early Christian ages, many of the most eminent Fathers of the Church had serious doubts respecting the authorship of the entire Pentateuch. I have not space, in the limited compass of these pages, to present in detail the facts and arguments that were then and have since been adduced. The literature of the subject is now very extensive. I may, however, refer the reader to the work of the pious and learned Dean Prideaux, on "The Old and New Testament connected," a work which is one of the literary ornaments of the last century. He will also find the subject more recently and exhaustively discussed by Bishop Colenso. The following paragraphs will convey a sufficiently distinct impression of the present state of the controversy:
The Pentateuch is affirmed to have been written by Moses, under the influence of divine inspiration. Considered thus, as a record vouchsafed and dictated by the Almighty, it commands not only scientific but universal consent.
But here, in the first place, it may be demanded, Who or what is it that has put forth this great claim in its behalf?
Not the work itself. It nowhere claims the authorship of one man, or makes the impious declaration that it is the writing of Almighty God.
Not until after the second century was there any such extravagant demand on human credulity. It originated, not among the higher ranks of Christian philosophers, but among the more fervid Fathers of the Church, whose own writings prove them to have been unlearned and uncritical persons.
Every age, from the second century to our times, has offered men of great ability, both Christian and Jewish, who have altogether repudiated these claims. Their decision has been founded upon the intrinsic evidence of the books themselves. These furnish plain indications of at least two distinct authors, who have been respectively termed Elohistic and Jehovistic. Hupfeld maintains that the Jehovistic narrative bears marks of having been a second original record, wholly independent of the Elohistic. The two sources from which the narratives have been derived are, in many respects, contradictory of each other. Moreover, it is asserted that the books of the Pentateuch are never ascribed to Moses in the inscriptions of Hebrew manuscripts, or in printed copies of the Hebrew Bible, nor are they styled "Books of Moses" in the Septuagint or Vulgate, but only in modern translations.
It is clear that they cannot be imputed to the sole authorship of Moses, since they record his death. It is clear that they were not written until many hundred years after that event, since they contain references to facts which did not occur until after the establishment of the government of kings among the Jews.
No man may dare to impute them to the inspiration of Almighty God—their inconsistencies, incongruities, contradictions, and impossibilities, as exposed by many learned and pious moderns, both German and English, are so great. It is the decision of these critics that Genesis is a narrative based upon legends; that Exodus is not historically true; that the whole Pentateuch is unhistoric and non-Mosaic; it contains the most extraordinary contradictions and impossibilities, sufficient to involve the credibility of the whole—imperfections so many and so conspicuous that they would destroy the authenticity of any modern historical work.
Hengstenberg, in his "Dissertations on the Genuineness of the Pentateuch," says: "It is the unavoidable fate of a spurious historical work of any length to be involved in contradictions. This must be the case to a very great extent with the Pentateuch, if it be not genuine. If the Pentateuch is spurious, its histories and laws have been fabricated in successive portions, and were committed to writing in the course of many centuries by different individuals. From such a mode of origination, a mass of contradictions is inseparable, and the improving hand of a later editor could never be capable of entirely obliterating them."
To the above conclusions I may add that we are expressly told by Ezra (Esdras ii. 14) that he himself, aided by five other persons, wrote these books in the space of forty days. He says that at the time of the Babylonian captivity the ancient sacred writings of the Jews were burnt, and gives a particular detail of the circumstances under which these were composed. He sets forth that he undertook to write all that had been done in the world since the beginning. It may be said that the books of Esdras are apocryphal, but in return it may be demanded, Has that conclusion been reached on evidence that will withstand modern criticism? In the early ages of Christianity, when the story of the fall of man was not considered as essential to the Christian system, and the doctrine of the atonement had not attained that precision which Anselm eventually gave it, it was very generally admitted by the Fathers of the Church that Ezra probably did so compose the Pentateuch. Thus St. Jerome says, "Sive Mosem dicere volueris auctorem Pentateuchi, sive Esdram ejusdem instauratorem operis, non recuso." Clemens Alexandrinus says that when these books had been destroyed in the captivity of Nebuchadnezzar, Esdras, having become inspired prophetically, reproduced them. Irenaeus says the same.