Let us listen to what some of these authorities say in support of
their assertions. Thus Lactantius, referring to the heretical
doctrine of the globular form of the earth, remarks: "Is it
possible that men can be so absurd as to believe that the crops
and the trees on the other side of the earth hang downward, and
that men have their feet higher than their heads? If you ask them
how they defend these monstrosities, how things do not fall away
from the earth on that side, they reply that the nature of things
is such that heavy bodies tend toward the centre, like the spokes
of a wheel, while light bodies, as clouds, smoke, fire, tend from
the centre to the heavens on all sides. Now, I am really at a
loss what to say of those who, when they have once gone wrong,
steadily persevere in their folly, and defend one absurd opinion
by another." On the question of the antipodes, St. Augustine
asserts that "it is impossible there should be inhabitants on the
opposite side of the earth, since no such race is recorded by
Scripture among the descendants of Adam." Perhaps, however, the
most unanswerable argument against the sphericity of the earth
was this, that "in the day of judgment, men on the other side of
a globe could not see the Lord descending through the air."

It is unnecessary for me to say any thing respecting the
introduction of death into the world, the continual interventions
of spiritual agencies in the course of events, the offices of
angels and devils, the expected conflagration of the earth, the
tower of Babel, the confusion of tongues, the dispersion of
mankind, the interpretation of natural phenomena, as eclipses,
the rainbow, etc. Above all, I abstain from commenting on the
Patristic conceptions of the Almighty; they are too