octrine of exclusive salvation.

It has been observed that this dogma also injured the sense of truth. As
man's eternal fate was at stake, it seemed plainly legitimate or rather
imperative to use any means to enforce the true belief--even falsehood
and imposture. There was no scruple about the invention of miracles or
any fictions that were edifying. A disinterested appreciation of truth
will not begin to prevail till the seventeenth century.

While this principle, with the associated doctrines of sin, hell, and
the last judgment, led to such consequences, there were other doctrines
and implications in Christianity which, forming a solid rampart against
the

[64] advance of knowledge, blocked the paths of science in the Middle
Ages, and obstructed its progress till the latter half of the nineteenth
century. In every important field of scientific research, the ground was
occupied by false views which the Church declared to be true on the
infallible authority of the Bible. The Jewish account of Creation and
the Fall of Man, inextricably bound up with the Christian theory of
Redemption, excluded from free inquiry geology, zoology, and
anthropology. The literal interpretation of the Bible involved the truth
that the sun revolves round the earth. The Church condemned the theory
of the antipodes. One of the charges against Servetus (who was burned in
the sixteenth century; see below, p. 79) was that he believed the
statement of a Greek geographer that Judea is a wretched barren country
in spite of the fact that the Bible describes it as a land flowing with
milk and honey. The Greek physician Hippocrates had based the study of
medicine and disease on experience and methodical research. In the
Middle Ages men relapsed to the primitive notions of a barbarous age.
Bodily ailments were ascribed to occult agencies--the malice of the Devil
or the wrath of God. St. Augustine said that the diseases of Christians
were caused by demons,

[65] and Luther in the same way attributed them to Satan. It was only
logical that supernatural remedies should be sought to counteract the
effects of supernatural causes. There was an immense traffic in relics
with miraculous virtues, and this had the advantage of bringing in a
large revenue to the Church. Physicians were often exposed to suspicions
of sorcery and unbelief. Anatomy was forbidden, partly perhaps on
account of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. The opposition
of ecclesiast