e could not have extended beyond that
district where Noah lived before the Flood; in vain did others, like
Bishop Croft and Bishop Stillingfleet, and the nonconformist Matthew
Poole, show that the Deluge might not have been and probably was not
universal; in vain was it shown that, even if there had been a universal
deluge, the fossils were not produced by it: the only answers were the
citation of the text, "And all the high mountains which were under the
whole heaven were covered," and, to clinch the matter, Worthington and
men like him insisted that any argument to show that fossils were not
remains of animals drowned at the Deluge of Noah was "infidelity." In
England, France, and Germany, belief that the fossils were produced
by the Deluge of Noah was widely insisted upon as part of that faith
essential to salvation.(160)

(160) For a candid summary of the proofs from geology, astronomy,
and zoology, that the Noachian Deluge was not universally or widely
extended, see McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical Theology
and Ecclesiastical Literature, article Deluge. For general history, see
Lyell, D'Archiac, and Vezian. For special cases showing the bitterness
of the conflict, see the Rev. Mr. Davis's Life of Rev. Dr. Pye Smith,
passim. For a late account, see Prof. Huxley on The Lights of the Church
and the Light of Science, in the Nineteenth Century for July, 1890.

But the steady work of science went on: not all the force of the
Church--not even the splendid engravings in Scheuchzer's Bible--could
stop it, and the foundations of this theological theory began to crumble
away. The process was, indeed, slow; it required a hundred and twenty
years for the searchers of God's truth, as revealed in Nature--such men
as Hooke, Linnaeus, Whitehurst, Daubenton, Cuvier, and William Smith--to
push their works under this fabric of error, and, by statements which
could not be resisted, to undermine it. As we arrive at the beginning of
the nineteenth century, science is becoming irresistible in this field.
Blumenbach, Von Buch, and Schlotheim led the way, but most important on
the Continent was the work of Cuvier. In the early years of the present
century his researches among fossils began to throw new light into the
whole subject of geology. He was, indeed, very conservative, and even
more wary and diplomatic; seeming, like Voltaire, to feel that "among
wolves one must howl a little." It was a time of reaction. Napole