The Lights of the Church and the Light of Science

not very long ago--when all the relations of ancient authors concerning the old world were received with a ready belief; and an unreasoning and uncritical faith accepted with equal satisfaction the narrative of the campaigns of Caesar and of the doings of Romulus, the account of Alexander's marches and of the conquests of Semiramis. We can most of us remember when, in this country, the whole story of regal Rome, and even the legend of the Trojan settlement in Latium, were seriously placed before boys as history, and discoursed of as unhesitatingly and in as dogmatic a tone as the tale of the Catilline Conspiracy or the Conquest of Britain. ...

But all this is now changed. The last century has seen the birth and growth of a new science--the Science of Historical Criticism. ... The whole world of profane history has been revolutionised. ...<1> <end quote>

If these utterances were true when they fell from the lips of a Bampton lecturer in 1859, with how much greater force do they appeal to us n