Some of the foremost men in the Church devoted themselves to buttressing it with new texts and throwing about it new outworks of theological reasoning; the great body of the faithful considered it a direct gift from the Almighty.

Even in the later centuries of the Middle Ages John of San Geminiano made a desperate attempt to save it.

Like Cosmas, he takes the Jewish tabernacle as his starting-point, and shows how all the newer ideas can be reconciled with the biblical accounts of its shape, dimensions, and furniture.( 28) (28) For a notice of the views of Cosmas in connection with those of Lactantius, Augustine, St.John Chrysostom, and others, see Schoell, Histoire de la Litterature Grecque, vol.vii, p.37.The main scriptural passages referred to are as follows: (1) Isaiah xi, 22; (2) Genesis i, 6; (3) Genesis vii, 11; (4) Exodus xxiv, 10; (5) Job xxvi, 11, and xxxvii, 18 (6) Psalm cxlviii, 4, and civ, 9; (7) Ezekiel i, 22-26.

For Cosmas's theory, see Montfaucon, Collectio Nova Patrum, Paris, 1706, vol.ii, p.188; also pp.

298, 299.