923-925; also 1000, 1001.

For Philastrius, see the De Hoeresibus, chap.

cxxxiii, in Migne, tome xii, p.1264.For Cosmas's view, see his Topographia Christiana, in Montfaucon, Col.Nov.

Patrum, ii, p.

150, and elsewhere as cited in my chapter on Geography.
This doctrine was of the highest respectability: it had been developed at a very early period, and had been elaborated until it accounted well for the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies; its final name, "Ptolemaic theory," carried weight; and, having thus come from antiquity into the Christian world, St.Clement of Alexandria demonstrated that the altar in the Jewish tabernacle was "a symbol of the earth placed in the middle of the universe": nothing more was needed; the geocentric theory was fully adopted by the Church and universally held to agree with the letter and spirit of Scripture.( 41) (41) As to the respectibility of the geocentric theory, etc., see Grote's Plato, vol.iii, p.