36, 72, and 93; also for similar
legends in other ancient nations, Lenormant, Origines de
l'Histoire, pp. 17 et seq.; for mediaeval representations of the
creation of man and woman, see Didron, Iconographie, pp. 35, 178,
224, 537.
The fathers of the Church generally received each of the two
conflicting creation legends in Genesis literally, and then,
having done their best to reconcile them with each other and to
mould them together, made them the final test of thought upon the
universe and all things therein. At the beginning of the fourth
century Lactantius struck the key-note of this mode of
subordinating all other things in the study of creation to the
literal text of Scripture, and he enforces his view of the
creation of man by a bit of philology, saying the final being
created "is called man because he is made from the ground--homo
ex humo."
In the second half of the same century this view as to the
literal acceptance of the sacred text was reasserted by St.
Ambrose, who, in his work on the creation, declared that "Moses
opened his mouth and poured forth what God had said to him." But
a greater than either of them fastened this idea into the
Christian theologies. St. Augustine, preparing his Commentary
on the Book of Genesis, laid down in one famous sentence the law
which has lasted in the Church until our own time: "Nothing is to
be accepted save on the authority of Scripture, since greater is
that authority than all the powers of the human mind.
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