'They continue this day
according to their ordinance.' _Fourthly_, Neither could birds, which
often fly off through an hour's circuit, be able to return to their
nests. _Fifthly_, Whatever flies or is suspended in the air ought (by
this theory) to move from west to east; but this is proved not to be
true, from birds, arrows shot forth, atoms made manifest in the sun, and
down floating in the atmosphere." The theologian, after thus laying down
the law, sets himself to meet objections. If it be urged that the
Scriptures in natural things speak according to the common opinion,
Turrettine answers, "_First_, The Spirit of God best understands
natural things. _Secondly_, That in giving instruction in religion, he
meant these things should be used, not abused. _Thirdly_, That he is not
the author of any error. _Fourthly_, Neither is he to be corrected on
the pretence of our blind reason." If it be further urged, that birds,
the air, and all things are moved with the earth, he answers, "_First_,
That this is a mere fiction, since air is a fluid body; and _secondly_,
if so, by what force would birds be able to go from east to west?"

Now this I must regard as a passage as instructive as it is
extraordinary. Turrettine was one of the most accomplished theologians
of his age; nor is that age by any means a remote one. Tycho Brahe,
Kepler, and Galileo, had all finished their labors long ere he published
this passage; nay, at the time when his work issued from the Amsterdam
press (1695), Isaac Newton had attained his fifty-third year; and fully
ten years previous, Professor David Gregory, nephew of the inventor of
the Gregorian telescope, had begun to teach, from his chair in the
University of Edinburgh, the doctrine of gravitation and the true
mechanism of the heavens, as unfolded in the Newtonian philosophy. The
learned theologian, had he applied himself to astronomical science,
could have found at the time very enlightened teachers; but falling into
exactly the mistake of the sailor of my illustration, or that into
which, two centuries before, the doctors of Salamanca had fallen, he set
himself, instead, to contend with the astronomers, and, to the extent of
his influence, labored to pledge revelation to an astronomy as false as
that of the Buddhist, Hindu, or old Teuton. His mistake, I repeat, was
exactly that of the sailor. Though in the Scriptures only the fact of
the _authorship_ of the great chronometer set in the heavens "t