, is that sacred, that revealed science, declared by the
Fathers to be the sum of all knowledge?

It likened all phenomena, natural and spiritual, to human acts. It saw
in the Almighty, the Eternal, only a gigantic man.

THE PATRISTIC PHILOSOPHY. As to the earth, it affirmed that it is a flat
surface, over which the sky is spread like a dome, or, as St. Augustine
tells us, is stretched like a skin. In this the sun and moon and stars
move, so that they may give light by day and by night to man. The earth
was made of matter created by God out of nothing, and, with all the
tribes of animals and plants inhabiting it, was finished in six days.
Above the sky or firmament is heaven; in the dark and fiery space
beneath the earth is hell. The earth is the central and most important
body of the universe, all other things being intended for and
subservient to it.

As to man, he was made out of the dust of the earth. At first he was
alone, but subsequently woman was formed from one of his ribs. He is the
greatest and choicest of the works of God. He was placed in a paradise
near the banks of the Euphrates, and was very wise and very pure; but,
having tasted of the forbidden fruit, and thereby broken the commandment
given to him, he was condemned to labor and to death.

The descendants of the first man, undeterred by his punishment, pursued
such a career of wickedness that it became necessary to destroy them. A
deluge, therefore, flooded the face of the earth, and rose over the tops
of the mountains. Having accomplished its purpose, the water was dried
up by a wind.

From this catastrophe Noah and his three sons, with their wives, were
saved in an ark. Of these sons, Shem remained in Asia and repeopled it.
Ham peopled Africa; Japhet, Europe. As the Fathers were not acquainted
with the existence of America, they did not provide an ancestor for its
people.

Let us listen to what some of these authorities say in support of their
assertions. Thus Lactantius, referring to the heretical doctrine of the
globular form of the earth, remarks: "Is it possible that men can be so
absurd as to believe that the crops and the trees on the other side of
the earth hang downward, and that men have their feet higher than their
heads? If you ask them how they defend these monstrosities, how things
do not fall away from the earth on that side, they reply that the nature
of things is such that heavy bodies tend toward the centre, like the
spokes of