ted animals destroyed at the Deluge. Tertullian was especially
firm on this point, and St. Augustine thought that a fossil tooth
discovered in North Africa must have belonged to one of the giants
mentioned in Scripture.(152)

(152) For Tertullian, see his De Pallio, c. ii (Migne, Patr. Lat.,
vol. ii, p. 1033). For Augustine's view, see Cuvier, Recherches sur les
Ossements fossiles, fourth edition, vol. ii, p. 143.

In the sixteenth century especially, weight began to be attached to
this idea by those who felt the worthlessness of various scholastic
explanations. Strong men in both the Catholic and the Protestant camps
accepted it; but the man who did most to give it an impulse into modern
theology was Martin Luther. He easily saw that scholastic phrase-making
could not meet the difficulties raised by fossils, and he naturally
urged the doctrine of their origin at Noah's Flood.(153)

(153) For Luther's opinion, see his Commentary on Genesis.

With such support, it soon became the dominant theory in Christendom:
nothing seemed able to stand against it; but before the end of the same
sixteenth century it met some serious obstacles. Bernard Palissy, one of
the most keen-sighted of scientific thinkers in France, as well as one
of the most devoted of Christians, showed that it was utterly untenable.
Conscientious investigators in other parts of Europe, and especially
in Italy, showed the same thing; all in vain.(154) In vain did good men
protest against the injury sure to be brought upon religion by tying it
to a scientific theory sure to be exploded; the doctrine that fossils
are the remains of animals drowned at the Flood continued to be upheld
by the great majority of theological leaders for nearly three centuries
as "sound doctrine," and as a blessed means of reconciling science
with Scripture. To sustain this scriptural view, efforts energetic and
persistent were put forth both by Catholics and Protestants.

(154) For a very full statement of the honourable record of Italy in
this respect, and for the enlightened views of some Italian churchmen,
see Stoppani, Il Dogma a le Scienze Positive, Milan, 1886, pp. 203 et
seq.

In France, the learned Benedictine, Calmet, in his great works on the
Bible, accepted it as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century,
believing the mastodon's bones exhibited by Mazurier to be those of King
Teutobocus, and holding them valuable testimony to the exi