736 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tions against evident testimonies of Scripture." Even Milton 

 seems to have hesitated between the two systems. At the begin- 

 ning of the eighth book of Paradise Lost he makes Adam state 

 the difficulties of the Ptolemaic system, and then brings forward 

 an angel to make the usual orthodox answers : later, Milton seems 

 to lean toward the Copernican theory, for, referring to the earth, 

 he says : 



" Or she from west her silent course advance 

 With inoffensive pace, that spinning sleeps 

 On her soft axle, while she faces even 

 And bears thee soft with the smooth air along." 



Yet English orthodoxy continued to assert itself. In 1794 

 John Hutchinson, professor at Cambridge, published his Moses' 

 Principia, a system of philosophy in which he sought to build up 

 a complete physical system of the universe from the Bible. In 

 this he assaulted the Newtonian theory as " atheistic," and led the 

 way for similar attacks by such Church teachers as Home, Dun- 

 can Forbes, and Jones of Nayland. But one far greater than 

 these involved himself in this view. That same limitation of his 

 reason by the simple statements of Scripture which led John 

 Wesley to declare that " unless witchcraft is true, nothing in the 

 Bible is true," led him, while giving up the Ptolemaic theory and 

 accepting in a general way the Copernican, to suspect the demon- 

 strations of Newton. Happily, his inborn nobility of character 

 lifted him above any bitterness or persecuting spirit, or any im- 

 position of doctrinal tests which could prevent those who came 

 after him from finding their way to the truth. 



But in the midst of this vast expanse of theologic error signs 

 of right reason began to appear, both in England and America. 

 Noteworthy is it that Cotton Mather, bitter as was his orthodoxy 

 regarding witchcraft, accepted, in 1721, the modern astronomy 

 fully, with all its consequences. 



In the following year came an even more striking evidence 

 that the new scientific ideas were making their way in England. 

 In 1722 Thomas Burnet published the sixth edition of his " Sacred 

 Theory of the Earth." In this he argues as usual to establish the 

 scriptural doctrine of the earth's stability; but in his preface 

 he sounds a remarkable warning. He mentions the great mis- 

 take into which St. Augustine led the Church regarding the 

 doctrine of the antipodes, and says, "If within a few years or 

 in the next generation it should prove as certain and demonstra- 

 ble that the earth is moved, as it is now that there are antipodes, 

 those that have been zealous against it, and engaged the Scripture 

 in the controversy, would have the same reason to repent of their 

 forwardness that St. Augustine would now, if he were still alive." 

 Fortunately, too. Protestantism had no such power to oppose 



