It is unnecessary for me to say any thing respecting the introduction of death into the world, the continual interventions of spiritual agencies in the course of events, the offices of angels and devils, the expected conflagration of the earth, the tower of Babel, the confusion of tongues, the dispersion of mankind, the interpretation of natural phenomena, as eclipses, the rainbow, etc.  Above all, I abstain from commenting on the Patristic conceptions of the Almighty; they are too anthropomorphic, and wanting in sublimity.

Perhaps, however, I may quote from Cosmas Indicopleustes the views that were entertained in the sixth century.  He wrote a work entitled “Christian Topography,” the chief intent of which was to confute the heretical opinion of the globular form of the earth, and the pagan assertion that there is a temperate zone on the southern side of the torrid.  He affirms that, according to the true orthodox system of geography, the earth is a quadrangular plane, extending four hundred days’ journey east and west, and exactly half as much north and south; that it is inclosed by mountains, on which the sky rests; that one on the north side, huger than the others, by intercepting the rays of the sun, produces night; and that the plane of the earth is not set exactly horizontally, but with a little inclination from the north:  hence the Euphrates, Tigris, and other rivers, running southward, are rapid; but the Nile, having to run up-hill, has necessarily a very slow current.

The Venerable Bede, writing in the seventh century, tells us that “the creation was accomplished in six days, and that the earth is its centre and its primary object.  The heaven is of a fiery and subtile nature, round, and equidistant in every part, as a canopy from the centre of the earth.  It turns round every day with ineffable rapidity, only moderated by the resistance of the seven planets, three above the sun—­Saturn, Jupiter, Mars—­ then the sun; three below—­Venus, Mercury, the moon.  The stars go round in their fixed courses, the northern perform the shortest circle.  The highest heaven has its proper limit; it contains the angelic virtues who descend upon earth, assume ethereal bodies, perform human functions, and return.  The heaven is tempered with glacial waters, lest it should be set on fire.  The inferior heaven is called the firmament, because it separates the superincumbent waters from the waters below.  The firmamental waters are lower than the spiritual heaven, higher than all corporeal beings, reserved, some say, for a second deluge; others, more truly, to temper the fire of the fixed stars.”

Was it for this preposterous scheme—­this product of ignorance and audacity—­that the works of the Greek philosophers were to be given up?  It was none too soon that the great critics who appeared at the Reformation, by comparing the works of these writers with one another, brought them to their proper level, and taught us to look upon them all with contempt.