Yet gainsayers still appeared. That the doctrine of the antipodes continued to have life, is shown by the fact that in the sixth century Procopius of Gaza attacks it with a tremendous argument. He declares that, if there be men on the other side of the earth, Christ must have gone there and suffered a second time to save them; and, therefore, that there must have been there, as necessary preliminaries to his coming, a duplicate Eden, Adam, serpent, and deluge. Cosmas Indicopleustes also attacked the doctrine with especial bitterness, citing a passage from St. Luke to prove that antipodes are theologically impossible. At the end of the sixth century came a man from whom much might be expected--St. Isidore of Seville. He had pondered over ancient thought in science, and, as we have seen, had dared proclaim his belief in the sphericity of the earth; but with that he stopped. As to the antipodes, the authority of the Psalmist, St. Paul, and St. Augustine silences him; he shuns the whole question as unlawful, subjects reason to faith, and declares that men can not and ought not to exist on opposite sides of the earth.(33) (33)For the opinions of Basil, Ambrose, and others, see Lecky, History of Rationalism in Europe, New York, 1872, vol. i, p. 279. Also Letronne, in Revue des Deux Mondes, March, 1834. For Lactantius, see citations already given. For St. Augustine's opinion, see the De Civitate Dei, xvi, 9, where this great father of the church shows that the antipodes "nulla ratione credendum est." For the unanimity of the fathers against the antipodes, see Zockler, vol. 1, p. 127. For a very naive summary, see Joseph Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies, Grimston's translation, republished by the Hakluyt Soc., chaps. vii and viii; also citations in Buckle's Posthumous Works, vol. ii, p. 645. For Procopius of Gaza, see Kretschmer, p. 55. See also, on the general subject, Peschel, Geschichte der Erdkunde, pp. 96-97. For Isidore, see citations already given. To understand the embarrassment caused by these utterances of the fathers to scientific men of a later period, see letter of Agricola to Joachim Vadianus in 1514. Agricola asks Vadianus to give his views regarding the antipodes, saying that he himself does not know what to do, between the fathers on the one side and the learned men of modern times on the other. On the other hand, for the embarrassment caused to the Church by this mistaken zeal of the fathers, see Kepler's references and Fromund's replies; also De Morgan, Paradoxes, p. 58. Kepler appears to have taken great delight in throwing the views of Lactantius into the teeth of his adversaries. Under such pressure this scientific truth seems to have disappeared for nearly two hundred years; but by the eighth century the sphericity of the earth had come to be generally accepted among the leaders of thought, and now the doctrine of the antipodes was again asserted by a bishop, Virgil of Salzburg.