Science, while somewhat freed from its old
limitations, became the handmaid of theology in illustrating the
doctrine of creative design, and always with apparent deference to
the Chaldean and other ancient myths and legends embodied in the
Hebrew sacred books.
About the middle of the seventeenth century came a great victory of
the scientific over the theologic method. At that time Francesco
Redi published the results of his inquiries into the doctrine of
spontaneous generation. For ages a widely accepted doctrine had
been that water, filth, and carrion had received power from the
Creator to generate worms, insects, and a multitude of the smaller
animals; and this doctrine had been especially welcomed by St.
Augustine and many of the fathers, since it relieved the Almighty
of making, Adam of naming, and Noah of living in the ark with these
innumerable despised species. But to this fallacy Redi put an end.
By researches which could not be gainsaid, he showed that every one
of these animals came from an egg; each, therefore, must be the
lineal descendant of an animal created, named, and preserved from
"the beginning.
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