32 GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 



matic ; whether it came within the category of strictly 

 infallible pronouncements, or whether it did not ; and 

 supposing the former alternative, whether it was in- 

 fallible in virtue of the Pope's sanction and command 

 to publish in the first instance, or whether it only 

 became so in virtue of the brief addressed to the 

 Archbishop of Cologne. All these questions, interest- 

 ing in themselves, I feel myself at liberty to pass 

 over, and to leave them, with the most profound 

 respect, to be sifted by professed theologians ; I 

 merely venture to remark, without attempting to 

 argue the matter, that, to my uninstructed intelli- 

 gence, the whole thing, including the Pope's brief, 

 appears to have a disciplinary character rather than 

 anything else. 



What, however, I would say is this the questions 

 above mentioned, which in the Giinther case are 

 doubtful, are in that of Galileo clear enough ; the 

 clause stating that the Pope had sanctioned the decree, 

 and ordered it to be published, on which the doubt 

 alluded to is founded, did not appear in the decree 

 against the Copernican books ; nor did the Popes of 

 that day issue any brief, such as Pius IX. addressed 

 to the Archbishop of Cologne. 



Mr. Eoberts, it is true, thinks he has a clenching 

 argument in a Bull of Pope Alexander VII., of which 

 I will speak hereafter, and which in my humble judg- 

 ment has the least force of any that he has adduced. 



The case of Professor Ubaghs, of the University 

 of Lou vain, which Mr. Koberts thinks still more to 



