ioo GALILEO AND HIS JUDGES. 



to define. But surely the putting of books on the 

 " Index Librorum Prohibitorum," whatever be the 

 reasons stated for doing so, is essentially an act of 

 discipline ; and so also is the condemnation of any 

 individual man for having disobeyed injunctions laid 

 upon him by authority, or for having disregarded the 

 principles laid down by the same authority for the 

 regulation of its practical conduct, so long as they 

 were in force, and not repealed by any subsequent 

 act. 



And this leads me to touch upon another argument 

 of Mr. Eoberts, who says, truly enough, that the 

 authority of Kome is greater than that of individual 

 theologians, and that Rome must know her own 

 mind. And because the decision of the Inquisition 

 in 1633, condemning Galileo personally, referred in 

 strong and marked language to the decree of the 

 Index in 1616, therefore he infers that the latter is 

 thereby proved to have been, in the judgment of 

 Rome herself, a doctrinal decision in the strict sense of 

 the words. It is quite true that the Inquisition said 

 that Galileo had done wrong in treating Copernicanism 

 as a probable opinion, since by no means could an 

 opinion be probable that had been declared and 

 defined to be contrary to Holy Scripture ; they 

 also said in allusion to the decree of the Index that 

 the books treating of the doctrine had been pro- 

 hibited, and the doctrine i.e. Copernicanism had 

 been declared false and altogether contrary to sacred 

 and Divine Scripture. But a stream cannot rise 



