(145) See Westminster Review, October, 1870, article on John Wesley's Cosmogony, with citations from Wesley's Sermons, Watson's Institutes of Theology, Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, etc. The immediate results of such teaching by such men was to throw many who would otherwise have resorted to observation and investigation back upon scholastic methods. Again reappears the old system of solving the riddle by phrases. In 1733, Dr. Theodore Arnold urged the theory of "models," and insisted that fossils result from "infinitesimal particles brought together in the creation to form the outline of all the creatures and objects upon and within the earth"; and Arnold's work gained wide acceptance.(146) (146) See citation in Mr. Ward's article, as above, p. 390. Such was the influence of this succession of great men that toward the close of the last century the English opponents of geology on biblical grounds seemed likely to sweep all before them. Cramping our whole inheritance of sacred literature within the rules of a historical compend, they showed the terrible dangers arising from the revelations of geology, which make the earth older than the six thousand years required by Archbishop Usher's interpretation of the Old Testament. Nor was this feeling confined to ecclesiastics. Williams, a thoughtful layman, declared that such researches led to infidelity and atheism, and are "nothing less than to depose the Almighty Creator of the universe from his office." The poet Cowper, one of the mildest of men, was also roused by these dangers, and in his most elaborate poem wrote: "Some drill and bore The solid earth, and from the strata there Extract a register, by which we learn That He who made it, and revealed its date To Moses, was mistaken in its age!" John Howard summoned England to oppose "those scientific systems which are calculated to tear up in the public mind every remaining attachment to Christianity." With this special attack upon geological science by means of the dogma of Adam's fall, the more general attack by the literal interpretation of the text was continued. The legendary husks and rinds of our sacred books were insisted upon as equally precious and nutritious with the great moral and religious truths which they envelop. Especially precious were the six days--each "the evening and the morning"--and the exact statements as to the time when each part of creation came into being. To save these, the struggle became more and more desperate. Difficult as it is to realize it now, within the memory of many now living the battle was still raging most fiercely in England, and both kinds of artillery usually brought against a new science were in full play, and filling the civilized world with their roar.