a wheel, while light bodies, as clouds, smoke, fire, tend from
the centre to the heavens on all sides. Now, I am really at a loss what
to say of those who, when they have once gone wrong, steadily persevere
in their folly, and defend one absurd opinion by another." On the
question of the antipodes, St. Augustine asserts that "it is impossible
there should be inhabitants on the opposite side of the earth, since
no such race is recorded by Scripture among the descendants of Adam."
Perhaps, however, the most unanswerable argument against the sphericity
of the earth was this, that "in the day of judgment, men on the other
side of a globe could not see the Lord descending through the air."

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 fr