"
In the twelfth century this view was incorporated by Peter Lombard
into his great theological work, the _Sentences_, which became a
text-book of theology through the middle ages. He affirmed that "no
created things would have been hurtful to man had he not sinned;
they became hurtful for the sake of terrifying and punishing vice
or of proving and perfecting virtue; they were created harmless,
and on account of sin became hurtful."
This theological theory regarding animals was brought out in the
eighteenth century with great force by John Wesley. He declared
that before Adam's sin "none of these attempted to devour or in
any wise hurt one another"; "the spider was as harmless as the
fly, and did not lie in wait for blood." Not only Wesley, but the
eminent Dr. Adam Clarke and Dr. Richard Watson, whose ideas had the
very greatest weight among the English Dissenters, and even among
leading thinkers in the Established Church, held firmly to this
theory; so that not until, in our own time, geology revealed the
remains of vast multitudes of carnivorous creatures, many of them
with half-digested remains of other animals in their stomachs, all
extinct long ages before the appearance of man upon earth, was a
victory won by science over theology in this field.
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