The general belief derived from the New
Testament Scriptures was, that the end of the world was at hand;
that the last judgment was approaching; that all existing
physical nature was soon to be destroyed: hence, the greatest
thinkers in the Church generally poured contempt upon all
investigators into a science of Nature, and insisted that
everything except the saving of souls was folly.
This belief appears frequently through the entire period of the
Middle Ages; but during the first thousand years it is clearly
dominant. From Lactantius and Eusebius, in the third century,
pouring contempt, as we have seen, over studies in astronomy, to
Peter Damian, the noted chancellor of Pope Gregory VII, in the
eleventh century, declaring all worldly sciences to be
"absurdities" and "fooleries," it becomes a very important
element in the atmosphere of thought.[376]
Then, too, there was established a standard to which all science
which did struggle up through this atmosphere must be made to
conform--a standard which favoured magic rather than science,
for it was a standard of rigid dogmatism obtained from literal
readings in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures.
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