the Divine attributes, the
supposition that the language which Catholic faith requires the
believer to hold that God inspired, was used in any other sense than
that which He knew it would convey to the minds of those to whom it
was addressed.

And I think that in this repudiation Father Suarez will have the
sympathy of every man of common uprightness, to whom it is certainly
"incredible" that the Almighty should have acted in a manner which He
would esteem dishonest and base in a man.

But the belief that the universe was created in six natural days is
hopelessly inconsistent with the doctrine of evolution, in so far as
it applies to the stars and planetary bodies; and it can be made to
agree with a belief in the evolution of living beings only by the
supposition that the plants and animals, which are said to have been
created on the third, fifth, and six days, were merely the primordial
forms, or rudiments, out of which existing plants and animals have
been evolved; so that, on these days, plants and animals were not
created actually, but only potentially.

The latter view is that held by Mr. Mivart, who follows St. Augustin,
and implies that he has the sanction of Suarez. But, in point of fact,
the latter great light of orthodoxy takes no small pains to give the
most explicit and direct contradiction to all such imaginations, as
the following passages prove. In the first place, as regards plants,
Suarez discusses the problem:--

"_Quomodo herba virens et caetera vegetabilia hoc [tertio] die
fuerint producta._[1]

[Footnote 1: "Propter haec ergo sententia illa Augustini et
propter nimiam obscuritatem et subtilitatem ejus difficilis
creditu est: quia verisimile non est Deum inspirasse Moysi,
ut historiam de creatione mundi ad fidem totius populi adeo
necessariam per nomina dierum explicaret, quorum significatio
vix inveniri et difficillime ab aliquo credi posset." _(Loc.
cit._ Lib. I. cap. xi. 42.)]

"Praecipua enim difficultas hic est, quam attingit Div. Thomas
I, par. qu. 69, art. 2, an haec productio plantarum hoc die
facta intelligenda sit de productione ipsarum in proprio esse
actuali et formali (ut sic rem explicerem) vel de productione
tantum in semine et in potentia. Nam Divus Augustinus libro
quinto Genes, ad liter, cap. 4 et 5 et libro 8, cap. 3,
posteriorem partem tradit, dicens, terram in hoc die accepisse
virtutem germinandi omnia