han they
had been under the older Church. The dominant spirit among the Reformers
is shown by the declaration of Peter Martyr to the effect that, if
a wrong opinion should obtain regarding the creation as described in
Genesis, "all the promises of Christ fall into nothing, and all the life
of our religion would be lost."(133)

(133) See his Commentary on Genesis, cited by Zoeckler, Geschichte der
Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, vol. i, p. 690.

In the times immediately succeeding the Reformation matters went from
bad to worse. Under Luther and Melanchthon there was some little freedom
of speculation, but under their successors there was none; to question
any interpretation of Luther came to be thought almost as wicked as
to question the literal interpretation of the Scriptures themselves.
Examples of this are seen in the struggles between those who held that
birds were created entirely from water and those who held that they were
created out of water and mud. In the city of Lubeck, the ancient centre
of the Hanseatic League, close at the beginning of the seventeenth
century, Pfeiffer, "General Superintendent" or bishop in those parts,
published his Pansophia Mosaica, calculated, as he believed, to beat
back science forever. In a long series of declamations he insisted that
in the strict text of Genesis alone is safety, that it contains all
wisdom and knowledge, human and divine. This being the case, who could
care to waste time on the study of material things and give thought to
the structure of the world? Above all, who, after such a proclamation
by such a ruler in the Lutheran Israel, would dare to talk of the "days"
mentioned in Genesis as "periods of time"; or of the "firmament" as not
meaning a solid vault over the universe; or of the "waters above the
heavens" as not contained in a vast cistern supported by the heavenly
vault; or of the "windows of heaven" as a figure of speech?(134)

(134) For Pfeiffer, see Zoeckler, vol. i, pp. 688, 689.

In England the same spirit was shown even as late as the time of
Sir Matthew Hale. We find in his book on the Origination of Mankind,
published in 1685, the strictest devotion to a theory of creation based
upon the mere letter of Scripture, and a complete inability to draw
knowledge regarding the earth's origin and structure from any other
source.

While the Lutheran, Calvinistic, and Anglican Reformers clung to literal
interpretatio