SEQUEL TO COPERNICUS. 281 



* 



rents of the Romish Church condemn the assumption o e authority in 

 such matters, which in this one instance, at least, was made by the 

 ecclesiastical tribunals. The author of the Ages of Faith (book viii. 

 p. 248) says, "A congregation, it is to be lamented, declared the new 

 system to be opposed to Scripture, and therefore heretical." In more 

 recent time?, as I have elsewhere remarked, 12 the Church of Authority 

 and the Church of Private Judgment have each its peculiar tempta- 

 tions and dangers, when there appears to be a discrepance between 

 Scripture and Philosophy. 



But though we may acquit the popes and cardinals in Galileo's time 

 of stupidity and perverseuess in rejecting manifest scientific truths, I 

 do not see how we can acquit them of dissimulation and duplicity. 

 Those persons appear to me to defend in a very strange manner the 

 conduct of the ecclesiastical authorities of that period, who boast of 

 the liberality with which Copernican professors were placed by them 

 in important offices, at the very time when the motion of the earth 

 had been declared by the same authorities contrary to Scripture. Such 

 merits cannot make us approve of their conduct in demanding from 

 Galileo a public recantation of the system which they thus favored in 

 other ways, and which they had repeatedly told Galileo he might hold 

 as much as he pleased. Nor can any one, reading the plain language 

 of the Sentence passed upon Galileo, and of the Abjuration forced from 

 him, find any value in the plea which has been urged, that the opinion 

 was denominated a heresy only in a wide, improper, and technical 

 sense. 



But if we are thus unable to excuse the conduct of Galileo's iuda'es, 



J O 



I do not see how we can give our unconditional admiration to the 

 philosopher himself. Perhaps the conventional decorum which, as 

 we have seen, was required in treating of the Copernican system, 

 may excuse or explain the furtive mode of insinuating his doctrines 

 which he often employs, and which some of his historians admire as 

 subtle irony, while others blame it as insincerity. But I do not see 

 with what propriety Galileo can be looked upon as a "Martyr of 

 Science." Undoubtedly he was very desirous of promoting what he 

 conceived to be the cause of philosophical truth ; but it would seem 

 that, while he was restless and eager in urging his opinions, he was 

 always ready to make such submissions as the spiritual tribunals 

 required. He would really have acted as a martyr, if he had uttered 



l - Phil. Lid. Sci. book x. clap. 4. 



