one or two authorities of weight. Now, perhaps no writer of the earlier Christian ages could be quoted whose authority is more generally recognized than that of St. Augustin. The same may be said of the mediæval period, for St. Thomas Aquinas; and, since the movement of Luther, Suarez may be taken as a writer widely venerated as an authority and one whose orthodoxy has never been questioned.
It must be borne in mind that for a considerable time after even the last of these writers no one had disputed the generally received view as to the small age of the world or at least of the kinds of animals and plants inhabiting it. It becomes therefore much more striking if views formed under such a condition of opinion are found to harmonize with modern ideas regarding "Creation" and organic life.
Now St. Augustin insists in a very remarkable manner on the merely derivative sense in which God's creation of organic forms is to be understood; that is, that God created them by conferring on the material world the power to evolve them under suitable conditions. He says in his book on Genesis:[[269]] "Terrestria animalia, tanquam ex ultimo elemento mundi ultima; nihilominus potentialiter, quorum numeros tempus postea visibiliter explicaret."
Again he says:—
"Sicut autem in ipso grano invisibiliter erant omnia simul, quæ per tempora in arborem surgerent; ita ipse mundus cogitandus est, cum Deus simul omnia creavit, habuisse simul omnia quæ in illo et cum illo facta sunt quando factus est dies; non solum cœlum cum sole et lunâ et sideribus ... ; sed etiam illa quæ aqua et terra produxit potentialiter atque causaliter, priusquam per temporum moras ita exorirentur, quomodo nobis jam nota sunt in eis operibus, quæ Deus usque nunc operatur."[[270]]
"Omnium quippe rerum quæ corporaliter visibiliterque
nascuntur, occulta quædam semina in istis corporeis mundi hujus elementis latent."[[271]]
And again: "Ista quippe originaliter ac primordialiter in quadam textura elementorum cuncta jam creata sunt; sed acceptis opportunitatibus prodeunt."[[272]]
St. Thomas Aquinas, as was said in the first chapter, quotes with approval the saying of St. Augustin that in the first institution of nature we do not look for Miracles, but for the laws of Nature: "In prima institutione naturæ non quæritur miraculum, sed quid natura rerum habeat, ut Augustinus dicit."[[273]]
Again, he quotes with approval St. Augustin's assertion that the kinds were created only derivatively, "potentialiter tantum."[[274]]