76 and following.
III.

THE FIRST GREAT EFFORT AT COMPROMISE, BASED ON THE FLOOD OF NOAH.
Long before the end of the struggle already described, even at a very early period, the futility of the usual scholastic weapons had been seen by the more keen-sighted champions of orthodoxy; and, as the difficulties of the ordinary attack upon science became more and more evident, many of these champions endeavoured to patch up a truce.

So began the third stage in the war--the period of attempts at compromise.
The position which the compromise party took was that the fossils were produced by the Deluge of Noah.
This position was strong, for it was apparently based upon Scripture.
Moreover, it had high ecclesiastical sanction, some of the fathers having held that fossil remains, even on the highest mountains, represented animals destroyed at the Deluge.

Tertullian was especially firm on this point, and St.Augustine thought that a fossil tooth discovered in North Africa must have belonged to one of the giants mentioned in Scripture.( 152) (152) For Tertullian, see his De Pallio, c.

ii (Migne, Patr.