Justinian next ordered the teaching of philosophy to be discontinued at Athens, and closed all the schools. The sciences were made to conform to Genesis, which was declared to be the only true account of the origin of nature; and the earth was declared to be flat, the sky spreading over it like a dome—or, in the words of St. Augustine, like a skin—in which all the bodies moved to give light to man. Lactantius declared the globular theory to be heretical. “Is it possible,” he said, “that man can be so absurd as to believe that the crops and the trees on the other side of the earth hang downwards, and that men have their feet higher than their heads? If you ask them how they defend these monstrosities, how things do not fall away from the earth on that side, they reply that the nature of things is such that heavy bodies tend towards the centre, like the spokes of a wheel, while light bodies, as clouds, smoke, fire, tend from the centre to the heavens on all sides. Now, I am really at a loss what to say of those who, when they have once gone wrong, steadily persevere in their folly, and defend one absurd opinion by another.” St. Augustine also said that “it is impossible there should be inhabitants on the opposite side of the earth, since no such race is recorded by Scripture among the descendants of Adam;” and again: “In the day of judgment men on the other side of a globe could not see the Lord descending through the air.” Thus perished all the grand work effected by the Ptolemies. Science was annihilated, progress arrested, and the dark ages had commenced, which lasted until the time of Luther and Copernicus, in the commencement of the sixteenth century. Throughout this long and dreary period the most cruel enormities were practised upon unoffending people; the Church became gorged with wealth; the clergy gave themselves up to all kinds of lust and debauchery; relics were sold, dispensations bartered; and no one’s property or person was safe. Progress was, however, only arrested for a time.