NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 741 



Meaux, the foremost theologian that France has ever produced, 

 declared it contrary to Scripture. 



Nor did matters seem to improve rapidly in the following 

 century. In England, John Hutchinson, as we have seen, pub- 

 lished in 1724 his Moses" Pi-incipia maintaining that the Hebrew 

 Scriptures are a perfect system of natural philosophy, and are 

 opposed to the Newtonian system of gravitation ; and, as we have 

 also seen, he was followed by a long list of noted men in the 

 Church. In France, two eminent mathematicians published in 

 1748 an edition of Newton's Principia ; but, in order to avert the 

 censure of the Church, they felt obliged to prefix to it a state- 

 ment absolutely false. Three years later, Boscovich, the great 

 mathematician of the Jesuits, used these words : " As for me, full 

 of respect for the Holy Scriptures and the decree of the Holy In- 

 quisition, I regard the earth as immovable ; nevertheless, for sim- 

 plicity in explanation I will argue as if the earth moves ; for it is 

 proved that of the two hypotheses the appearances favor that 

 idea." 



In Germany, especially in the Protestant part of it, the war 

 was even more bitter, and it lasted through the first half of the 

 eighteenth century. Eminent Lutheran doctors of divinity flood- 

 ed the country with treatises to prove that the Copernican theory 

 could not be reconciled with Scripture. 



In the theological seminaries and in many of the universities 

 where clerical influence was strong they seemed to sweep all be- 

 fore them ; and yet at the middle of the century we find some of 

 the clearest-headed of them aware of the fact that their cause 

 was lost.* 



In 1757 the most enlightened perhaps in the whole line of 

 the popes, Benedict XIV, took up the matter, and the Congrega- 

 tion of the Index secretly allowed the ideas of Copernicus to be 

 tolerated. Yet in 1705 Lalande, the great French astronomer, 

 tried in vain at Rome to induce the authorities to remove Gali- 

 leo's works from the Index. Even at a date far within our own 

 nineteenth century the authorities of many universities in Cath- 

 olic Europe, and especially those in Spain, excluded the Newton- 

 ian system: in 1771 the greatest of them all, the University of 

 Salamanca, being urged to teach physical science, refused, making 



* For Cassini's position, see Henri Martin, Ilistoire de France, vol. xiii, p. 175. For 

 Riccioli, see Daunou, Etudes Historiqiies, vol. ii, p. 439. For Bossuet, see Bertrand, p. 41. 

 For Hutchinson, see Lyell, Principles of Geology, p. 48. For Wesley, see his work, already 

 cited. As to Boscovich, his declaration, mentioned in the text, was in l74fi, but in 1785 he 

 seemed to feel his position in view of history, and apologized abjectly : Bertrand, pp. fiO, 

 61. See also Whewell's notice of Le Sueur and Jacquier's introduction to their edition of 

 Newton's Principia. P'or the struggle in Germany, see Zoeckler, Geschichte der Beziehun- 

 gen zwischcn Theologie und Naturwissenschaft, vol. ii, pp. 45 et seq. 



