Yet here again geology was obliged to confront theology in revealing the PYTHON in the Eocene, ages before man appeared.( 145) (145) See Westminster Review, October, 1870, article on John Wesley's Cosmogony, with citations from Wesley's Sermons, Watson's Institutes of Theology, Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, etc.
The immediate results of such teaching by such men was to throw many who would otherwise have resorted to observation and investigation back upon scholastic methods.

Again reappears the old system of solving the riddle by phrases.

In 1733, Dr.Theodore Arnold urged the theory of "models," and insisted that fossils result from "infinitesimal particles brought together in the creation to form the outline of all the creatures and objects upon and within the earth"; and Arnold's work gained wide acceptance.( 146) (146) See citation in Mr.Ward's article, as above, p.

390.
Such was the influence of this succession of great men that toward the close of the last century the English opponents of geology on biblical grounds seemed likely to sweep all before them.

Cramping our whole inheritance of sacred literature within the rules of a historical compend, they showed the terrible dangers arising from the revelations of geology, which make the earth older than the six thousand years required by Archbishop Usher's interpretation of the Old Testament.
Nor was this feeling confined to ecclesiastics.