94 MEMOIR OP GALILEO. 



of the Inquisitors, but he might have confounded their ac- 

 cusations, and either stood the free champion of truth, or 

 fallen the proud martyr of science. He had observation 

 and experience on his side against which no one could shut 

 his eyes ; he had arguments to advance which could neither 

 be eluded nor contradicted j and more, he had the precedent 

 of the church itself acknowledging, and in a manner pat- 

 ronizing the very opinions for holding which they were per- 

 secuting him. At the very moment that he stood clothed 

 in penitential sackcloth before the bar of the Inquistion, the 

 work of Corpernicus (himself a Catholic priest), dedicated 

 to the Pope, stood in the library of the Vatican ; and in the 

 very year of Galileo's first persecution, a work was issued 

 by a Carmelite monk at Naples, upholding the same opin- 

 ions, and its author never called in question. By confessing 

 to the charges of the Inquisition, Galileo in a manner jus- 

 tified its proceedings. And, however detrimental it may 

 have been to the interests of science, however degrading to 

 the spirit of humanity, we must look upon the ancient phi- 

 losopher with a kindly eye. He lived in a time when the 

 mind of society was bound down in reverence and fear to 

 the dictates of the church. His expanded mind might in 

 its vigor have braved persecution, and even death, before 

 perjuring himself in the eyes of the world. But old age 

 had laid its withering hand upon him ; physical suffering 

 had broken down his frame ; and, dreading to sigh out his 

 few remaining days in the \nely dungeons of the inquisi- 

 tion, he quailed before the dread power of that fearful in- 

 stitution, and passively renounced, in words, those opinions 

 which he knew to be true, and which the progress of science 

 has since demonstrated. On his knees, and with his hand 

 upon the Scriptures, he solemnly abjured the opinions he had 

 taught, in the following words : 



" With a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I abjure, curse, and detest 

 the said errors and heresies, (viz., that the earth moves, &c.) I swear 



