otes the additional testimony of Abraham, David, Hosea,
Isaiah, Zachariah, and Melchisedek, who clenched the case against the
Antipodes. "For how indeed could even rain be said to 'fall' or to
'descend,' as in the Psalms and the Gospels, in those regions where it
could only be said to 'come up'?"

Again, the world cannot be a globe, or sphere, or be suspended in
mid-air, or in any sort of motion, for what say the Scriptures? "Earth
is fixed on its foundations"; "Thou hast laid the foundations of the
earth and it abideth"; "Thou hast made the round world so sure, that it
cannot be moved"; "Thou hast made all men to dwell upon the face of the
whole earth"--not "upon every face," or upon any more than one
face--"upon _the_ face," not the back or the side, but the broad flat
face we know. "Who then with these passages before him, ought even to
speak of Antipodes?"

So much against false doctrine; to establish the truth is simpler still.
For the same St. Paul, who disposes of science falsely so called, does
not he speak, like David, like St. Peter and St. John, of our world as a
tabernacle? "If our earthly house of this tabernacle be dissolved," "We
that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened," which points to
the natural conclusion of enlightened faith, that Moses' tabernacle was
an exact copy of the universe. "See thou make all things according to
the pattern shewn thee in the Mount." So the four walls, the covered
roof, the floor, the proportions of the Tent of the Wilderness, shewed
us in small compass all that was in nature.

If any further guidance were needed, it was ready to hand in the Prophet
Isaiah and the Patriarch Job. "That stretcheth out the heavens as a
curtain and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in"; "Also can any
understand the spreadings of the clouds or the noise of his tabernacle?"

The whole reasoning is like the theological arguments on the effects of
man's fall upon the stars and the vegetable world, or the atmospheric
changes due to angels.

But though Cosmas states his system with the claims of an article of
faith, there were not wanting men, and even saints, who stood out on the
side of reason in geography in the most traditional of times. Isidore of
Seville, and Vergil, the Irish missionary of the eighth century, both
maintained the old belief of Basil and Ambrose, that the question of the
Antipodes was not closed by the Church, and that error in this point was
venial and not m