In English-speaking lands this has
lasted until our own time: the most eminent of recent English
biologists has told us how in every path of natural science he has,
at some stage in his career, come across a barrier labelled "No
thoroughfare Moses."
A favourite subject of theological eloquence was the perfection of
the Pentateuch, and especially of Genesis, not only as a record of
the past, but as a revelation of the future.
The culmination of this view in the Protestant Church was the
_Pansophia Mosaica of Pfeiffer_, a Lutheran general superintendent,
or bishop, in northern Germany, near the beginning of the
seventeenth century. He declared that the text of Genesis "must be
received strictly"; that "it contains all knowledge, human and
divine"; that "twenty-eight articles of the Augsburg Confession are
to be found in it"; that "it is an arsenal of arguments against all
sects and sorts of atheists, pagans, Jews, Turks, Tartars, papists,
Calvinists, Socinians, and Baptists"; "the source of all sciences
and arts, including law, medicine, philosophy, and rhetoric"; "the
source and essence of all histories and of all professions, trades,
and works"; "an exhibition of all virtues and vices"; "the origin
of all consolation.
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