178 LAW AND FREEDOM IN HISTORY Bossuet's theme is handled by pedestrian representatives of the same Medieval school of Early Modern Western historical thought, the ridi- culous bathos to which a sublime Biblical doctrine has been reduced becomes prosaically apparent.1 Archbishop Usshcrz (mvcbat A.D. 1581- 1656) makes the Medieval Western Christian Weltanschauung chrono- logically ludicrous when he mobilizes the heavy artillery of Early Modern Western scholarship to demonstrate that the date of the Creation was 4004 (sic, not 4000) B.C.,3 Old Style, at 6 p.m. on the evening before the 23 October;4 and Dr. Hartmann Schedel, the learned compiler of the Nuremberg Chronicle,3 makes it visually ludicrous when, between a preview of the Last Things that are to bring History to its meticulously predetermined end and the colophon of a record of already accomplished events, that he has carried down to the moment at which the manuscript was sent to the printer, he inserts three blank folios in order to give an industrious owner of the tome the necessary space, if he is willing to write on both sides of each sheet, for completing the record between the year 1493 of the Christian Era and God's fore-appointed *D~DayJ for the sounding of the Last Trump.6 When all due allowance has been made 1 'Du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas' (Napoleon to do Pratt, after the Grand Army's retreat from Moscow in A.D. 1812). 3 See VI. vii, 390.. 3 'In hanc concessi sententiam: a ycsperS primum Mundi diem uperusntc ad mediam noctem primum Christianas aerae diem inchoantem, annos fluxisse 4003, dies 70, et horas temporarias 6, verumque Christi Domini natalem, quadritmnio toto (quod mortis Herodis tempus demonstrat) vulgaris aerae Christiunae principio untcnorcm cxtitiase, Juxta rationes enim nostras, et Salomonici Templi structuru 3000^ Mundi anno eat absoluta; et 4000 Mundi anno, impletis diebus quibus Virjjo WCOTOKQS «rut paritura, Christus in perfects carne, cujus Templum fucrat typua, hominibua primum npparuit et manifestatus est. Unde ad annos aerae Christitmae 4 additiw, et ub uiinis imte ctmdem totidem detractis, pro communi et yulgatS vera jit genruina obtmcbttur Nutivituti.H Christi epocha' (Ussher, J.: Annales Veteris Tcstantcnti a Prinid Mttndi Origine Ih'ducti (London 1650, Flesher), Lectori). Amw ants Anno Periodi tieram jfttliani Ghristiun&m 'In principio creavit Deus Coelum et Terram* [Genes, i, a], quod temporis principium (juxta nostram Chrono-logiam) incidit in noctis illius initium quae sxiii diem Octobris praecessit, in anno Periodi Julinnae 710. 'Primo 710 4004 igitur seculi die (Oct. 33, ferisl i) cum supremo Coclo creavit Deus angelos,* etcetera. Ibid., p. I. s Schedel, Hartmann: Liber Chronicanim (Nuremberg, acath July, 1493, Anton Koberger). 6 ^ After bringing his narrative of the Sescta Etas Mundi down to the moment (ka'a* Junias Anno ab incarnatione salvatoris xpi Millesimo quadringentesimo nonageaimo tercio) of going to press, Dr. Schedel addresses the reader as fallows in his last paragraph on the reverse aide of his folio cclviii: 'Cartas aliquas sine scriptura pro sexta etate deinccpa relinqucre convenit, mdicio posteno if..