All this "science falsely so called," so sedulously developed by the master minds of the Church, and yet so futile that we might almost suppose that the great apostle, in a glow of prophetic vision, had foreseen it in his famous condemnation, seems at this distance very harmless indeed; yet, to many guardians of the "sacred deposit of doctrine" in the Church, even so slight a departure from the main current of thought seemed dangerous. It appeared to them like pressing the doctrine of secondary causes to a perilous extent; and about the beginning of the seventeenth century we have the eminent Spanish Jesuit and theologian Suarez denouncing it, and declaring St. Augustine a heretic for his share in it. But there was little danger to the older idea just then; the main theological tendency was so strong that the world kept on as of old. Biblical theology continued to spin its own webs out of its own bowels, and all the lesser theological flies continued to be entangled in them; yet here and there stronger thinkers broke loose from this entanglement and helped somewhat to disentangle others.(20) (20) For Bede's view of the ark and the origin of insects, see his Hexaemeron, i and ii; for Isidore, see the Etymologiae, xi, 4, and xiii, 22; for Peter Lombard, see Sent., lib. ii, dist. xv, 4 (in Migne, cxcii, 682); for St. Thomas Aquinas as to the laws of Nature, see Summae Theologica, i, Quaest. lxvii, art. iv; for his discussion on Avicenna's theory of the origin of animals, see ibid., i Quaest. lxxi, vol. i, pp. 1184 and 1185, of Migne's edit.; for his idea as to the word of God being the active producing principle, see ibid., i, Quaest. lxxi, art. i; for his remarks on species, see ibid, i, Quaest. lxxii, art. i; for his ideas on the necessity of the procreation of man, see ibid, i, Quaest. lxxii, art. i; for the origin of animals from putrefaction, see ibid, i, Quaest. lxxix, art. i, 3; for Cornelius a Lapide on the derivative creation of animals, see his In Genesim Comment., cap. i, cited by Mivart, Genesis of Species, p. 282; for a reference to Suarez's denunciation of the view of St. Augustine, see Huxley's Essays. At the close of the Middle Ages, in spite of the devotion of the Reformed Church to the letter of Scripture, the revival of learning and the great voyages gave an atmosphere in which better thinking on the problems of Nature began to gain strength. On all sides, in every field, men were making discoveries which caused the general theological view to appear more and more inadequate.