In France, the old theological spirit remained exceedingly powerful. About the middle of the eighteenth century Buffon made another attempt to state simple geological truths; but the theological faculty of the Sorbonne dragged him at once from his high position, forced him to recant ignominiously, and to print his recantation. It runs as follows: "I declare that I had no intention to contradict the text of Scripture; that I believe most firmly all therein related about the creation, both as to order of time and matter of fact. I abandon everything in my book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which may be contrary to the narrative of Moses." This humiliating document reminds us painfully of that forced upon Galileo a hundred years before. It has been well observed by one of the greatest of modern authorities that the doctrine which Buffon thus "abandoned" is as firmly established as that of the earth's rotation upon its axis.(138) Yet one hundred and fifty years were required to secure for it even a fair hearing; the prevailing doctrine of the Church continued to be that "all things were made at the beginning of the world," and that to say that stones and fossils were made before or since "the beginning" is contrary to Scripture. Again we find theological substitutes for scientific explanation ripening into phrases more and more hollow--making fossils "sports of Nature," or "mineral concretions," or "creations of plastic force," or "models" made by the Creator before he had fully decided upon the best manner of creating various beings. (138) See citation and remark in Lyell's Principles of Geology, chap. iii, p. 57; also Huxley, Essays on Controverted Questions, p. 62.