NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 593 



quences wMcli must result to Cliristian theology were the heav- 

 enly bodies proved to revolve about the sun and not about the 

 earth. Their most tremendous engine against Galileo was the 

 statement that " his pretended discovery vitiates the whole Chris- 

 tian plan of salvation." Father Lecazre declared that " it casts 

 suspicion on the doctrine of the incarnation." Others declared 

 that it " upsets the whole basis of theology ; that if the earth is a 

 planet, and only one among several planets, it can not be that any 

 such great things have been done specially for it as the Christian 

 doctrine teaches. If there are other planets, since God makes 

 nothing in vain, they must be inhabited ; but how can these in- 

 habitants be descended from Adam ? How can they trace back 

 their origin to Noah's ark ? How can they have been redeemed 

 by the Saviour ? " Nor was this argument confined to the theolo- 

 gians of the Roman Church ; Melanchthon, Protestant as he was, 

 had already used it in his attacks on Copernicus and his school. 



In addition to this prodigious theological engine of war there 

 was kept up a fire of smaller artillery in the shape of texts and 

 scriptural extracts. 



But the war grew still more bitter, and some weapons used in 

 it are worth examining. They are very easily examined, for they 

 are to be found on all the battle-fields of science; but on that 

 field they were used with more effect than on almost any othsr. 

 These weapons are the epithets " infidel " and " atheist." The 

 battle-fields of science are thickly strewn with these. They have 

 been used against almost every man who has ever done anything 

 new for his fellow-men. The list of those who have been de- 

 nounced as " infidel " and " atheist" includes almost all great men 

 of science, general scholars, inventors, and philanthropists. The 

 purest Christian life, the noblest Christian character, have not 

 availed to shield combatants. Christians like Isaac Newton, 

 Pascal, Locke, Milton, and even Fenelon and Howard, have had 

 this weapon hurled against them. Of all proofs of the existence 

 of a God, those of Descartes have been wrought most thoroughly 

 into the minds of modern men ; yet the Protestant theologians of 

 Holland sought to bring him to torture and to death by the 

 charge of atheism, and the Roman Catholic theologians of France 

 prevented any due honors to him at his burial.* 



These epithets can hardly be classed with civilized weapons. 

 They are burning arrows; they set fire to masses of popular 

 prejudice, always obscuring the real question, sometimes destroy- 



* For various objectors and objections to Galileo by his contemporaries, see Libri, His- 

 toire des Sciences mathematiques en Italic, vol. iv, pp. 233, 234 ; also Martin, Vie de Gali- 

 lee. For Father Lecazrc's argument, see Flammarion, Mondes imajiinaires et r^els, 6i^me 

 edition, pp. 315, 316. For Melanchthon's argument, see his Initia, in Opera, vol. iii, Halle, 

 1846. 



VOL. XL. — 41 



