Albert was a theologian rather than a scientist, and yet, deeply versed as he was in theology, he declared in a treatise concerning Heaven and Earth, [Footnote 33] that "in studying nature we have not to enquire how God the Creator may, as He freely wills, use His creatures to work miracles and thereby show forth His power; we have rather to enquire what nature with its immanent causes can naturally bring to pass." This can scarcely fail to seem a surprising declaration to those who have been accustomed to think of medieval philosophers as turning by preference to miraculous explanations of things, but such a notion is founded partly on false tradition, with regard to the real teaching of the medieval {296} scholars, and even more on the partisan declarations of those who thought it the proper thing to make as little as possible of the intelligence of the people of the Middle Ages, in order to account for their adhesion to the Catholic Church. [Footnote 33: De Coelo et Mundo, I. tr. iv., X.] As a matter of fact, Albert's declaration, far from being an innovation, was only in pursuance of the truly philosophic method which had characterized the writings of the great Christian thinkers from the earlier time. Unfortunately, the declarations of lesser minds are sometimes accepted as having represented the thoughts of men and the policy of the Church. It is not these lesser men, however, who have been in special honor. No one, for instance, can possibly be looked upon as representing Church teaching better than Augustine, who because of the depth of his teaching, yet his wonderful fidelity to Christian dogma, received the formal title of Father of the Church, which carried with it the approval of everything that he had written. There is a well-known quotation from St. Augustine which shows how much he deprecated the attempt to make Scriptures an authority in science, and how much he valued observation as compared with authority, in such matters as are really within the domain of investigation by experiment and observation.