Basil and St.
Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas and Bossuet, and from Luther to
Wesley, on the radical distinction indicated in Genesis, God having
created man "in his own image." What this statement meant was seen
in the light of the later biblical statement that "Adam begat Seth
in his own likeness, after his image."
In view of this and of well-known texts incorporated from older
creation legends into the Hebrew sacred books it came to be widely
held that, while man was directly moulded and fashioned separately
by the Creator's hand, the animals generally were evoked in numbers
from the earth and sea by the Creator's voice.
A question now arose naturally as to the _distinctions of species_
among animals. The Vast majority of theologians agreed in
representing all animals as created "in the beginning," and named
by Adam, preserved in the ark, and continued ever afterward under
exactly the same species. This belief ripened into a dogma. Like so
many other dogmas in the Church, Catholic and Protestant, its real
origins are to be found rather in pagan philosophy than in the
Christian Scriptures; it came far more from Plato and Aristotle
than from Moses and St.
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