" He dwells with great force on the fact that St.
Paul based one of his most powerful arguments upon this declaration
regarding the preachers of the gospel, and that he declared even
more explicitly that "Verily, their sound went into all the earth,
and their words unto the ends of the world." Thenceforth we find it
constantly declared that, as those preachers did not go to the
antipodes, no antipodes can exist; and hence that the supporters of
this geographical doctrine "give the lie direct to King David and
to St. Paul, and therefore to the Holy Ghost." Thus the great
Bishop of Hippo taught the whole world for over a thousand years
that, as there was no preaching of the gospel on the opposite side
of the earth, there could be no human beings there.
The great authority of Augustine, and the cogency of his scriptural
argument, held the Church firmly against the doctrine of the
antipodes; all schools of interpretation were now agreed--the
followers of the allegorical tendencies of Alexandria, the strictly
literal exegetes of Syria, the more eclectic theologians of the
West.
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