host." Thus the great
Bishop of Hippo taught the whole world for over a thousand years that,
as there was no preaching of the gospel on the opposite side of the
earth, there could be no human beings there.

The great authority of Augustine, and the cogency of his scriptural
argument, held the Church firmly against the doctrine of the antipodes;
all schools of interpretation were now agreed--the followers of the
allegorical tendencies of Alexandria, the strictly literal exegetes of
Syria, the more eclectic theologians of the West. For over a thousand
years it was held in the Church, "always, everywhere, and by all," that
there could not be human beings on the opposite sides of the earth, even
if the earth had opposite sides; and, when attacked by gainsayers, the
great mass of true believers, from the fourth century to the fifteenth,
simply used that opiate which had so soothing an effect on John Henry
Newman in the nineteenth century--securus judicat orbis terrarum.

Yet gainsayers still appeared. That the doctrine of the antipodes
continued to have life, is shown by the fact that in the sixth century
Procopius of Gaza attacks it with a tremendous argument. He declares
that, if there be men on the other side of the earth, Christ must have
gone there and suffered a second time to save them; and, therefore, that
there must have been there, as necessary preliminaries to his coming, a
duplicate Eden, Adam, serpent, and deluge.

Cosmas Indicopleustes also attacked the doctrine with especial
bitterness, citing a passage from St. Luke to prove that antipodes are
theologically impossible.

At the end of the sixth century came a man from whom much might be
expected--St. Isidore of Seville. He had pondered over ancient thought
in science, and, as we have seen, had dared proclaim his belief in the
sphericity of the earth; but with that he stopped. As to the antipodes,
the authority of the Psalmist, St. Paul, and St. Augustine silences him;
he shuns the whole question as unlawful, subjects reason to faith, and
declares that men can not and ought not to exist on opposite sides of
the earth.(33)

(33)For the opinions of Basil, Ambrose, and others, see Lecky, History
of Rationalism in Europe, New York, 1872, vol. i, p. 279. Also Letronne,
in Revue des Deux Mondes, March, 1834. For Lactantius, see citations
already given. For St. Augustine's opinion, see the De Civitate Dei,
xvi, 9, where this great father of the church show