In vain were exhibited the absolute geological, zoological, astronomical proofs that no universal deluge, or deluge covering any large part of the earth, had taken place within the last six thousand or sixty thousand years; in vain did so enlightened a churchman as Bishop Clayton declare that the Deluge could not have extended beyond that district where Noah lived before the Flood; in vain did others, like Bishop Croft and Bishop Stillingfleet, and the nonconformist Matthew Poole, show that the Deluge might not have been and probably was not universal; in vain was it shown that, even if there had been a universal deluge, the fossils were not produced by it: the only answers were the citation of the text, "And all the high mountains which were under the whole heaven were covered," and, to clinch the matter, Worthington and men like him insisted that any argument to show that fossils were not remains of animals drowned at the Deluge of Noah was "infidelity." In England, France, and Germany, belief that the fossils were produced by the Deluge of Noah was widely insisted upon as part of that faith essential to salvation.( 160) (160) For a candid summary of the proofs from geology, astronomy, and zoology, that the Noachian Deluge was not universally or widely extended, see McClintock and Strong, Cyclopedia of Biblical Theology and Ecclesiastical Literature, article Deluge.

For general history, see Lyell, D'Archiac, and Vezian.

For special cases showing the bitterness of the conflict, see the Rev.Mr.Davis's Life of Rev.Dr.Pye Smith, passim.

For a late account, see Prof.Huxley on The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science, in the Nineteenth Century for July, 1890.
But the steady work of science went on: not all the force of the Church--not even the splendid engravings in Scheuchzer's Bible--could stop it, and the foundations of this theological theory began to crumble away.

The process was, indeed, slow; it required a hundred and twenty years for the searchers of God's truth, as revealed in Nature--such men as Hooke, Linnaeus, Whitehurst, Daubenton, Cuvier, and William Smith--to push their works under this fabric of error, and, by statements which could not be resisted, to undermine it.