The next theologian to take up the question of creation was St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) in the thirteenth century. He quotes St. Augustine's view with approval, but does not contribute anything of his own. One should not hastily conclude, however, because these views were held by leaders of theological thought, that they were universally accepted. "The truth is that all classes of theologians departed from the original philosophical and scientific standards of some of the Fathers of the Church, and that special creation became the universal teaching from the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the nineteenth centuries." The Doctrine of Special Creation.--About the seventeenth century a change came about which was largely owing to the writings and influence of a Spanish theologian named Suarez (1548-1617). Although Suarez is not the sole founder of this conception, it is certain, as Huxley has shown, that he engaged himself with the questions raised by the Biblical account of creation; and, furthermore, that he opposed the views that had been expressed by Augustine. In his tract upon the work of the six days (_Tractatus de opere sex dierum_) he takes exception to the views expressed by St. Augustine; he insisted that in the Scriptural account of creation a day of twenty-four hours was meant, and in all other cases he insists upon a literal interpretation of the Scriptures. Thus he introduced into theological thought the doctrine which goes under the name of special creation. The interesting feature in all this is that from the time of St. Augustine, in the fifth century, to the time when the ideas of Suarez began to prevail, in the seventeenth, there had been a harmonious relation between some of the leading theologians and scientific men in their outlook upon creation. The opinion of Augustine and other theologians was largely owing to the influence of Aristotle. "We know," says Osborn, "that Greek philosophy tinctured early Christian theology; what is not so generally realized is that the Aristotelian notion of the development of life led to the true interpretation of the Mosaic account of the creation. "There was in fact a long Greek period in the history of the evolutionary idea extending among the Fathers of the Church and later among some of the schoolmen, in their commentaries upon creation, which accord very closely with the modern theistic conception of evolution. If the orthodoxy of Augustine had remained the teaching of the Church, the final establishment of evolution would have come far earlier than it did, certainly during the eighteenth century instead of the nineteenth century, and the bitter controversy over this truth of nature would never have arisen."