C., at nine o'clock in the morning."
Here was, indeed, a triumph of Lactantius's method, the result of
hundreds of years of biblical study and theological thought since
Bede in the eighth century, and Vincent of Beauvais in the
thirteenth, had declared that creation must have taken place in the
spring. Yet, alas! within two centuries after Lightfoot's great
biblical demonstration as to the exact hour of creation, it was
discovered that at that hour an exceedingly cultivated people,
enjoying all the fruits of a highly developed civilization, had
long been swarming in the great cities of Egypt, and that other
nations hardly less advanced had at that time reached a high
development in Asia.[10]
But, strange as it may seem, even after theologians had thus
settled the manner of creation, the matter employed in it, the time
required for it, and the exact date of it, there remained virtually
unsettled the first and greatest question of all; and this was
nothing less than the question, WHO actually created the universe?
Various theories more or less nebulous, but all centred in texts of
Scripture, had swept through the mind of the Church.
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