There is no record of La Peyrère’s response to this merriment, but we do know that he set to work composing his recantation. He had been led astray, he wrote, by his Calvinist upbringing, which had erroneously taught him that he should interpret Scripture according to reason and his own conscience. That path brought him to the pre-Adamite theory, but now he understood: he had to follow neither the dictates of reason nor the promptings of conscience, but only the authority of the pope. He therefore renounced his claims about men before Adam, his account of the Flood as a local event, his denial
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