d their
works constitute, as may be imagined, a body of literature of vast
extent.

Our only present concern is to learn, if possible, what was the
general attitude of this army of ecclesiastical writers towards the
physical sciences, especially the science of astronomy. Explicit
treatises on astronomy we shall not, indeed, expect them to supply.
For their works when massed are seen to constitute a library of
theology, and in such a collection we should no more look for
scientific treatises than in a modern library for law. But inasmuch
as the Fathers of the Church have been accused, by Andrew D. White
and others, of having stayed and even thwarted the advance of
science, it becomes the interest and the duty of the apologist to
hunt up their scientific allusions that we may learn to what extent
the charges made are true.

_The Standstill of Science_.--It has often been alleged as
derogatory to the accomplishments of the Fathers, that they
contributed nothing to the progress of scientific knowledge. From
our modern standpoint we may be tempted to esteem this failure of
theirs as a cardinal sin. But it would be wrong in this instance, as
in every other, to render a verdict of guilt too hastily. We of the
twentieth century are prone to forget that there are other fields of
profitable intellectual exploration besides the physical, and that
there may be objects of research and thought worthier of study than
the material world.

The Fathers of the Church were philosophers and theologians occupied
with the problems of the world's origin and destiny, higher themes,
surely, than any with which physical science is concerned. It is the
fashion of the day to praise the ancient Greeks at the expense of
the patristic and medieval theologians. But the distinction is to a
large extent inconsistent, since both bodies of writers were at work
upon the selfsame themes. Philosophers like the Greeks, the Fathers
were like them moralists as well, engaged in the elaboration of
right rules of conduct. Finally, unlike the Greeks, the Fathers were
Scriptural scholars, many of them of extensive erudition, in homily
and commentary expounding with wonderful assiduity the Sacred Books
in which they believed that God had given His revelation to man.

_Analogous Examples_.--Should we be surprised, then, if men so
occupied failed to add much to the world's store of scie