Forced from this position, he next affirmed that it is motionless, the sun and the stars actually revolving, as they apparently do, around it.

The invention of the telescope proved that here again he was in error.

Then he maintained that all the motions of the solar system are regulated by providential intervention; the "Principia" of Newton demonstrated that they are due to irresistible law.

He then affirmed that the earth and all the celestial bodies were created about six thousand years ago, and that in six days the order of Nature was settled, and plants and animals in their various tribes introduced.
Constrained by the accumulating mass of adverse evidence, he enlarged his days into periods of indefinite length--only, however, to find that even this device was inadequate.

The six ages, with their six special creations, could no longer be maintained, when it was discovered that species, slowly emerged in one age, reached a culmination in a second, and gradually died out in a third: this overlapping from age to age would not only have demanded creations, but re-creations also.