Like so many other dogmas in the Church, Catholic and Protestant, its real origins are to be found rather in pagan philosophy than in the Christian Scriptures; it came far more from Plato and Aristotle than from Moses and St.Paul.But this was not considered: more and more it became necessary to believe that each and every difference of species was impressed by the Creator "in the beginning," and that no change had taken place or could have taken place since.
Some difficulties arose here and there as zoology progressed and revealed ever-increasing numbers of species; but through the Middle Ages, and indeed long after the Reformation, these difficulties were easily surmounted by making the ark of Noah larger and larger, and especially by holding that there had been a human error in regard to its measurement.( 13) (13) For St.Augustine, see De Genesis and De Trinitate, passim; for Bede, see Hexaemeron, lib.

i, in Migne, tome xci, pp.

21, 36-38, 42; and De Sex Dierum Criatione, in Migne, tome xciii, p.

215; for Peter Lombard on "noxious animals," see his Sententiae, lib.

ii, dist.