"The strictly biblical men of science, such eminent fathers and bishops as Theophilus of Antioch... and Clement of Alexandria... with others in centuries following, were not content with merely opposing what they stigmatized as an old heathen theory; they drew from their Bibles a new Christian theory... Taking the survival of various early traditions, given in the seventh verse of the first chapter of Genesis, they insisted... that the earth was, at creation, arched over with a solid vault, a "firmament," and to this... from Isaiah and the Psalms, in which it declared that the heavens are stretched out "like a curtain" and again "like a tent to dwell in." The universe, then, is like a house: the earth is its ground floor, the firmament its ceiling, under which the Almighty hangs out the sun to rule the day and the moon and stars to rule the night. This ceiling is also the floor of the apartment above, and in this is a cistern... containing "the waters which are above the firmament." These waters are let down upon the earth by the Almighty and his angels "through the windows of heaven." As to the movement of the sun, there was a citation of various passages in Genesis, mixed with metaphysics in various proportions, and this was thought to give ample proofs from the Bible that the earth could not be a sphere."