He easily saw that scholastic phrase-making could not meet the difficulties raised by fossils, and he naturally urged the doctrine of their origin at Noah's Flood.( 153) (153) For Luther's opinion, see his Commentary on Genesis.
With such support, it soon became the dominant theory in Christendom: nothing seemed able to stand against it; but before the end of the same sixteenth century it met some serious obstacles.

Bernard Palissy, one of the most keen-sighted of scientific thinkers in France, as well as one of the most devoted of Christians, showed that it was utterly untenable.
Conscientious investigators in other parts of Europe, and especially in Italy, showed the same thing; all in vain.( 154) In vain did good men protest against the injury sure to be brought upon religion by tying it to a scientific theory sure to be exploded; the doctrine that fossils are the remains of animals drowned at the Flood continued to be upheld by the great majority of theological leaders for nearly three centuries as "sound doctrine," and as a blessed means of reconciling science with Scripture.

To sustain this scriptural view, efforts energetic and persistent were put forth both by Catholics and Protestants.
(154) For a very full statement of the honourable record of Italy in this respect, and for the enlightened views of some Italian churchmen, see Stoppani, Il Dogma a le Scienze Positive, Milan, 1886, pp.

203 et seq.
In France, the learned Benedictine, Calmet, in his great works on the Bible, accepted it as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century, believing the mastodon's bones exhibited by Mazurier to be those of King Teutobocus, and holding them valuable testimony to the existence of the giants mentioned in Scripture and of the early inhabitants of the earth overwhelmed by the Flood.( 155) (155) For the steady adherence to this sacred theory, see Audiat, Vie de Palissy, p.

412, and Cantu, Histoire Universelle, vol.xv, p.492.